Deference for Darkness
by Stormaktstiden
Summary: Eric Shepard is a soldier. When a soldier is told to kill, he kills. He does not question orders, he does not ask "why", he does not mourn the fallen. He fulfills his task and moves onto the next. He is designated, choreographed and calculated to do nothing more and nothing less. That is what he is, he is not a monster. Eric Shepard is a soldier and nothing will ever change that.
1. Prologue

**Author's Note: So, this is going to be a thing. By thing I mean story, and by story I mean it will be the story of ME1 alone. Once this is done, I'll probably move onto ME2 and ME3 with a new story. Unless I don't, which by I don't I mean I'll just include the full Shepard saga in this one story.**

 **If you couldn't tell, I'm not the most organized person when it comes to these things. Or the most foresighted.**

 **I don't know why I'm aligning these in the center either.**

 **Disclaimer:** **Mass Effect and any music I use in this belong to their respective owners, not to me.**

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 _"The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space." - Carl Sagan_

 **Prologue**

The blackened sky of Mindoir glittered with clustered dots of light. Some were simple transportation vessels with their blinkers on, but the other incandescent objects that glistened against the darkness were not creations of man, but of the universe.

A young boy, only in the thirteenth year of his life with the name of Eric Shepard, blew a burst of air out from his mouth to move that lock of hair that fell over his eye once he had laid down on the grassy field to gaze at the starry night sky. With the bit of blond hair no longer covering his sight, the stunning view above became fully clear to him.

He thought about what was out there, in the depths of space, beyond the relatively isolated colony planet which he had spent his entire life on. He of course knew of the beautiful Asari, the militant Turians, the wayfaring Quarians, the tribal Krogans, and how they all were placed into a sort of galactic hierarchy; but that was almost all he knew of them. Not once had he met even one of the alien species which his mother and father had spoken of so many times.

He had in fact never even dared to venture beyond his small colony home in the outskirts of the country side besides occasional trips to the city for buying supplies, and knew of the universe and its many wonders only through stories and pictures handed down to him by his parents.

Life was simple away from the big city. The cycle of eat, sleep and work was all his family needed to worry about doing, and they had gotten by rather well by doing just that.

But no amount of exhausting labour or plentiful harvests could stop the young farm boy from sneaking out of his bedroom window in the dead of night to escape the rural life, even if it was only in his head, and imagine what his life would be like on those colossal stations which floated silently within the confines of space, or perhaps what it would be like to command a mighty vessel of his own, exploring the vast oceans of stars which would await him.

The stars reflected in his blue eyes like they would calm lake water as he gazed into the astral luminosity, before flickering over to a curious phenomenon which suddenly appeared in the night sky.

In the old times, wise men once said that a event such as that which came into his view only came when the Gods themselves cast their eye down at the mortals from the heavens. From the gap which they would peak through at the mortal world, stars would fall, flashing across the sky, telling whoever bears witness to the event that beings beyond the confines of reality now looked down upon them, and would listen to whatever their heart desires.

Eric pushed himself from the ground where he laid upon, a gasp of wind blowing the tall grass around him as he stood up on his feet, his eyes never leaving the shooting star during this.

 _I wish, one day, those mesmerizing stars will be mine to explore, that the seas of the universe will be mine to sail, that the deepest and most unknown worlds mine to discover, and all its mysteries and secrets mine to uncover._

He gave his wishes to what he thought to be a shooting star, but when it did not continue to shoot across the sky and disappear before his eyes, he continued.

 _Was that too many wishes? Am I only supposed to give one?_ He asked unto the sky, but no one was there to answer his questions.

 _Well, if you're not going to answer, I have to get going now._ He spoke to the void. _I have to get up extra early for Church tomorrow, and I've already stayed up too late._

He turned to walk back towards his house, which was only a short trek away from his star gazing spot, but not before looking back at the night sky of Mindoir for what would be unknowingly the last time.

 _I'll see you again soon._ He promised to the stars. Little did the boy know what that fateful wish would entail, and what the shining star that soared across the midnight sky would bring to the tiny farming colony on the edge of the Attican Traverse named Mindoir.

 **\- 13 years later -**

Eric shot up from his bed, his body dripping with sweat as he breathed heavily in the darkness of his quarters.

 _Another damn nightmare._ He thought, sitting up and swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

 _That's fourth one this week… what's happening to me?_ He glumly pondered, placing his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands.

The intensive therapy he had received from the Alliance should have made the blasted things go away, and for awhile they did. But since the last month or so, they had been back with a vengeance.

And he began to remember all he wished to forget.

 _ **Machine guns echoed through the night, cutting down the masses of civilians who tried to flee in vain.**_

 _ **Mortars sound off and blaze the scene, scaring fields that once were green.**_

He remembers it all.

 _ **After the aliens had finished pillaging the capital city of Mindoir, they came for the farms.**_

 _ **The sound of all types of weapons being loaded as he and his family joined a local resistance group, who would rather die than comply with the slavers.**_

 _ **His mother fleeing with his baby sister Jane to keep her safe.**_

 _ **Thousands of the disgusting looking aliens, Batarians his father had called them, charging straight at their defenses as every man, woman and child who picked up arms began to fire into the horde.**_

 _ **The sickening sound of bullets tearing through flesh.**_

 _ **The screams of pain and fury as they fought the raiders with all they had.**_

 _ **His older brother John standing next to him firing his pistol in desperation as the odds turned against them.**_

 ** _There were just too many._**

The memories of that slaughter, the sounds of Mindoir, 2170, still haunted him to this day. The awful noises came together like a cruel genre of music, as if conducted by Death himself. A rhythm of destruction, a concert of war, a symphony of death.

The sound of his alarm buzzing broke his train of thoughts. Looking up from his hands, he reached over and set the alarm to 'off' before standing up from his bed.

Today he would need to freshen up more than usual. Anderson had informed him yesterday that a Specter would be visiting the Normandy, and along with inspecting every single nook and cranny of the alliance vessel, he would also be watching its crew members closely. Whatever that meant.

For now, he would try to cast aside the questions surrounding the remerging nightmares. Hopefully their resurgence was nothing more than a random occurrence which could be sorted out with a simple talk with Chakwas. That he would try, but try alone was all he could do. The still questions hung over his head like a foreboding stormcloud, not close enough to pelt him with droplets of water and strike him with bolts of lightning, but yet not far enough away that he couldn't see its thunderous fury drawing ever closer.

 _Come now, Eric, you are not some sort of emotional mess._ He reminded himself. _You do not wine, you do not angst, and you certainly do not make yourself out to be any but what you truly are._

 _You are a soldier. Don't forget, you're here forever. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will never change its purpose._ He thought, looking up over to the other side of the room opposite to his bed. There, up against the wall, was fixed a plaque with those exact words written upon it.

 ** _"Don't forget, you're here forever, Soldier."_**

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 **There is a small bit of lore breaking in this, as Shepard is three years younger than he is in the actual game (26 instead of 29). But that shouldn't be game breaking or anything, unless there is an age restriction on Specters or N7s or something.**

 **Anyways, this is my first time writing anything related to Mass Effect, so reviews and criticism are appreciated :)**


	2. Honorable Intentions

**Disclaimer: Mass Effect and any music I use in this belong to their respective owners, not to me.**

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 _"'Let there be light!' said God, and there was light! 'Let there be blood!' says a man, and there is a sea!" - Lord Byron_

 **Honorable Intentions**

Eden Prime was burning. The sky was a hellish red and dotted with black smoke clouds. Its surface was set ablaze with fire and her buildings were either collapsed or in the process of doing so.

Shots zipped passed her head as she peaked her head out from behind the rock she used as cover before quickly ducking back behind it. Her heart pumped faster and faster by the second, her legs were incredibly sore, and her white and pink body armour was covered in dirt from sliding and rolling to avoid gunfire.

However, all of that would have been null and void to Ashley Williams if it wasn't for one thing. As she ran from the geth who pursued her through the dig site, she had dropped her gun.

She looked around for another rock that she could move to from her current position without getting shot, but cursed under her breath as she saw that the hill in front of her was completely open and without cover. Her attention was drawn away from looking for another way out when she heard a twig snap behind her, telling her that the enemy was drawing near.

There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. The only thing she could do now was count down the seconds till she met her fate.

"Wait."

Her head turned to where she heard a voice whisper in her ear. There at her shoulder was crouched a marine wearing black and red armour.

"How many?" He asked simply.

"W-What?" Ashley replied, still dazed and confused on how the marine seemed to have appeared out of thin air next to her. Suddenly, the robotic noises which she had become recently familiar with sounded off again. Ashley turned her head and her breath was taken from her as just a foot away, two geth troopers stood with their weapons aimed straight at the crouching pair.

A flush of air blew past her ear, and before she could blink, a knife landed in the bright blue flashlight eye of one of the geth, causing it to black out before its body fell limp to the ground. The other was engulfed in a blue aura before being thrown down the hill that they were on and landing broken and destroyed at the bottom.

"Only two, Commander." Another voice spoke. Ashley looked behind her to see another marine, this one in black armour, walking down the hill towards them.

"Secure the perimeter, Lieutenant." The marine, who was supposedly a commander, ordered to the lieutenant, who nodded his head before walking off to do exactly that.

Ashley tried to stand up, but her sore legs failed her. Before she fell back to the ground, the commander caught her arm and helped her stand.

"Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams of the 212." She stated her name and rank as he let go of her arm and let her stand on her own. "Are you in charge here, Sir?" She asked, still catching her breath as she did.

"Yes." The commander answered, his voice deepened by the N7 breather helmet which covered his head. "I need a status report right now, Gunnery Chief."

Ashley sighed and dipped her head. This was going to be difficult to explain.

 **\- The Prothean Dig Site -**

Kaidan's eyes scanned over the ruins of the dig site. Machines and equipment were knocked over and broken, obvious signs that they had been abandoned with haste. However, what caught his eye was the fact that, in the center of the dig site, where they had been told the objective would be waiting for them, was an empty platform.

"Commander," he spoke into his comm, "the dig site is secure, but the beacon isn't here."

"Hold your position, Lieutenant." Shepard's voice spoke back to him before the line went dead.

 _Not even a 'good job, Lieutenant'._ Kaidan thought as he leaned up against a wall. The commander was always a hardass, but he could have at least abided by the 'credits' due where credits' earned' maxim.

 _Such a dick._

The Commander and the Gunnery Chief arrived shortly after. The three of them made their way past the dig site until they came upon the camp site of the excavation's scientists.

Kadian felt his heart skip a beat when, in the middle of the camp, four purple, tripod-like objects with metal spikes in their center pointing straight up. What was truly startling to him was not the intimidating large spikes nor their odd coloring, but the things which were impaled atop the mysterious purple machines.

To him, they seemed to be only corpses, but at the same time it looked as if someone or something had mutilated and modified the dead bodies.

"Commander!" He exclaimed as the pikes suddenly retracted downwards, and the greyish zombies let out a deafening screech and their cybernetics began to glow as they stood and attacked the Alliance soldiers.

Kaidan drew his M-3 Predator, Ashley her Alliance standard M-7 Lancer and Shepard his own Lancer before the three unloaded into the charging zombie husks. For all their disturbing looks and horrifying cries, the four husks were dispatched rather easily once they began to concentrate their fire. Still, Kaidan could not help but be somewhat disturbed even after they had eliminated the threat.

"What the hell were those things?" He asked, lowering his heavy pistol back to his holster.

"Enemies." Shepard answered simply, causing Kaidan to roll his eyes under his helmet at the simple answer he was given. "Check the camp for any survivors." He ordered, and the three split up to scavenge the destroyed camp.

"Sir!" Ashley called out to Shepard, who turned to see the Gunnery Chief standing in front of the door to one of the two buildings in the camp that still stood. "This door is locked tight."

"Hack the encryption then." Shepard ordered like it was obvious before turning around and going back to shifting through the wreckage of one of the destroyed buildings. He continued to check for any weapons or data pads in the wreckage, both of which would be useful in their current situation, before he heard a loud beeping noise from behind him, the sound he immediately recognized as the sound which decrypted locks made when they detected something trying to break into them.

He turned around to see the Gunnery Chief still fiddling with the lock, desperately trying to find a way to make the noise stop, but Shepard knew her efforts were futile.

"Move."

Ashley turned around to see Shepard standing behind her, with an N7 Crusader shotgun pointed straight at her. Her instincts kicked in, and Ashley rolled out of the way to the side. A fireball-like blast shot out from the barrel, blowing the locked door off its hinges. **(1)**

"Take point, Gunnery Chief." Shepard gestured to the blown open doorway, and Ashley did her best to appear unaffected by his actions when she dusted off her armour before drawing her predator pistol and entering the building.

"Don't shoot!"

A woman and a man who wore lab coats were crouched in the corner of the room. Ashley lowered her weapon as Shepard and Kaidan entered behind her.

"We're just scientists!" The redhead woman exclaimed, standing up and holding her hands above her head.

"Keep your hands where I can see them." Ashley heard Shepard say, she turned to see him still holding his shotgun at the ready. "Now, tell me where the prothean beacon is."

"W-We don't know." The woman stuttered, still stunned buy their entrance. "As soon as the geth attacked, we ran and hid here."

"Run we can, but hide we cannot!" The man crouched into a ball in the corner of the room proclaimed. "They bring the end of all ends! Their prophet rides forth on a violet horse, and brings with him the destruction of all living creatures!"

"Quiet, Manuel!" The woman shouted at the seemingly crazy man. Despite this, what he had said caught Shepard's attention.

"What prophet?" He asked the man who was in the fetal position.

"The turian! His bright blue eyes show the wisdom of the Gods, they have chosen him to herald their return!"

Shepard looked over to Kaidan, and Kaidan looked to Shepard. They both knew something was terribly wrong.

"Nihlus?" Shepard called into his comm unit as Ashley and Kadian followed him out of the camp site and made their their way up a hill towards the Starport. "Nihlus? Are you there?"

"I'm here, Shepard." The turian specter replied.

"Nihlus, there is another turian here." Shepard explained into the comm. "Do not trust him, he's working with whatever is behind this attack."

"What was that, Shepard?" Nihlus' voice asked, suddenly distorted. "I can't _*bizt*_ understand _*bizt*_ you. I think I'm _*bizt*_ breaking up-"

Shepard swore under his breath. He turned his head to see both Ashley and Kaidan staring at him, as if they were entitled to an explanation of what had just happened.

Eric Shepard did not believe in entitlements.

"Up the hill, move!" He ordered, snapping the two marines out of their trance. The three then made their way up the hill, until a blaring sound shook the ground around them.

"Mother of God..." Ashley mumbled as they came to the top of the hill and saw what looked to be a ginormous ship with a cuddle fish-like shape and a dark purple coloring on its hull as it ascended to the sky through the red clouds.

"A violet horse..." Kaidan whispered to himself, reiterating the words of the supposed madman.

Suddenly a gunshot rang throughout the valley, Shepard's eyes flickered away from the ship for a moment to see a figure in dark armour fall limp to the ground and another figure in light grey armour walk over his body.

"Lieutenant, Gunnery Chief, I want you both to stay close to me."

"What?" Kaidan asked, confused at such an unorthodox comment from a person like Shepard. "Why? Because of that huge ship we just saw?"

"No, something worse." Shepard answered, only giving the biotic even more things to question in his head as they made their way down the hill. At the bottom of the hill, there awaited several geth and Husks, but they were dispatched with relative ease by the outnumbered three.

"Is that Nihlus?" Kaidan asked as they climbed the stairs to the spaceport, only to find the body of the turian Specter's body laid out unceremoniously.

 _Damn it._ Shepard thought, crouching down next to the motionless Specter to check for a pulse that wasn't there. _There is only one thing a soldier like Nihlus would let his guard down for: another Specter. And there's only one turian Specter who I know matches Manuel's description._ He mused, observing the bullet hole in the back of Nihlus' head.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the boxes to his left shuffle ever so slightly. Shepard stood up and walked over to the crates before thrusting out his foot and kicking them backwards, forcing the man hiding behind them to jump out of its path.

"Jesus Christ!" The man who hid exclaimed as he regained his balance and stood up. "Please, for the love of God, please don't shoot!"

"I don't think he's with the geth, sir." Kadian spoke up.

Shepard turned his head to look back at Kaidan. "Did I ask for your opinion, Lieutenant?" He asked calmly.

Kadian had to hold in a sigh of contempt. "No, sir."

Without another word spoken between him and the Lieutenant, Shepard turned back to the man in civilian clothes.

"Did you see what happened to that turian?" He questioned, pointing over his shoulder at the dead Specter's body behind him.

"Y-Yes," the man stuttered, "there was another turian who he called 'Saren'. When the one in black turned around, he shot him in the back of the head! I swear, it's all true, I saw it with my own two eyes!" He babbled on unnervingly.

"Is that it?" Shepard continued to question, his eyes, hidden by his black visor, staring into the man.

"That's it. My name is Powell by the way." Powell replied.

Ashley, standing behind Shepard's left, frowned at Powell. "Why didn't the geth kill-"

"You're lying."

Ashley turned her head to see the interrupting Commander with his M-6 Carnifex drawn at Powell.

Powell flinched at the sight of the barrel of the heavy pistol staring him down. "What the hell are you talking about?!"

"I can see it in your eyes." Shepard scoffed coldly. "Now, what are you hiding?"

"I got nothing to hide!" Powell proclaimed, failing to cover up the nervousness in his voice. "You can't do this to me, this is an abuse of power! I have my rights!"

"This is my power to abuse then." Shepard grunted, visibly tightening his grip on his sidearm. "As of this moment, you no longer have any rights, Powell. There will be no fair trial for you. You will die here, today, just like the rest of your friends. No one will find your body, no one will question your death, no one will know the truth, and no one is going to stop me from pulling this trigger if you don't give me what I want right now."

 _Holy shit..._ Ashley gawked at the awesome display of ruthlessness which had just transpired before her.

Kadian on the other hand had been silently clenching his fists at the sight of Shepard's vicious treatment of an supposedly innocent person.

 _He can't keep getting away with this!_ Kaidan thought angrily. Two years he had been working with this man, and for two years he had been forced to watch his inhumane behavior passed off by the higher-ups of the Alliance as 'necessary' or 'useful'.

The look of horror in the man's eyes, the way his knees began to buckle and shake as sweat ran down his brow, it wasn't something that even the cruelest utilitarian minds of the Alliance brass could justify.

 _It's just wrong!_

After Powell coughed up that he was apart of a smuggling ring in Eden Prime's spaceport, Kaidan felt less empathetic to him. However, nothing would justify the way the Commander acted, or justify the way the Commader was as a person.

 _Two wrongs don't make a right, it's as simple as that._ The Lieutenant said to himself as they boarded the small platform that led them deeper into the spaceport.

As they came close to their next stop, Kaidan noticed a rather peculiar metal object in the distance which sat against the side of a stairwell. However, what truly granted him comprehension of what the object was the blinking red light which flashed on top of it.

"Commander, do you see what I see?" He asked off to the side as their train came to a halt.

"Yes." Shepard responded, walking off the train platform towards the blinking red light. "Lieutenant, I want you to disarm this as well as any other bombs, which we're bound to come across. If Saren really wants to destroy this colony, he would need more than one bomb of this type." He turned to Ashley, who had been walking behind him. "Gunnery Chief, I want you to cover me."

 **(Begin playing: 12: Ouch - RvB Season 10 OST)**

"Cover you? From what?" Ashley asked, but bullets broke the still air before she could get an answer.

"Get down!" Kaidan grabbed her arm and pulled her down next to him behind the cover of the stairwell.

Ashley clutched her assault rifle tightly against her chest but also noticed something, or more accurately someone, was missing.

"Commander?!"

"Got it!" Kadian exclaimed. Ashley turned to see that he had disarmed the first bomb. "Come on, Williams, there's gonna be more around here."

Ashley, with the sudden disappearance of Shepard still troubling her thoughts, reluctantly held her tongue and followed him.

The two ran from cover to cover, dodging gunfire until they came upon a short, metal bridge which led over to the other side of the spaceport, where Kaidan had spotted several bombs. Pinned down by enemy fire, the duo were doing exactly what Shepard had hoped for: providing a distraction.

 _Perfect._ Shepard thought as he uncloaked to the left of a geth with his carnifex pistol already aimed at its head.

A single bullet was all it took for its flashlight head to explode into pieces. Shepard then swung his right leg around to trip the geth trooper who stood to his immediate right before lowering his pistol to unload one lethal round into its metal neck. Behind him he heard the robotic roar of a geth prime. He quickly rolled out of the path of the charging geth before standing up and boldly running after it. As the giant white geth came to a halt in its charge, Shepard unsheathed his combat knife and jumped on its back. The prime flailed its huge metal-plated arms, trying to grab him, letting loose a beastly synthetic screech when Shepard climbed the talons on its back and stabbed his blade into the geth's single, glowing eye. He then propelled himself off of the geth's back before it fell limp to the ground, and then retrieved his knife from its shattered eye.

"Is it dead?"

 **(Stop playing: 12: Ouch - RvB Season 10 OST)**

Shepard turned around to see the Gunnery Chief and Kaidan standing, staring at him as he stood over the corpse of the geth prime.

"It was a machine." Shepard answered Ashley's question as he walked towards and then past her and Kaidan. "It was never alive to begin with." He added without turning to face the pair.

After defusing the remaining bombs in that area of the spaceport, the three marines made their way down a catwalk to a platform where they finally laid eyes upon their objective.

A glowing green aura surrounded the prothean beacon, giving an eerie feeling to the ancient technology as it stood on the edge of the platform.

"Lieutenant," Shepard turned his head to Kaidan, "search the perimeter for any other bombs."

"Yessir." The biotic nodded his head before walking off to investigate the surrounding area, leaving Ashley and Shepard alone together as they examined the beacon which had caused them so much trouble. **(2)**

"Normandy, we've secured the beacon and are requesting immediate EVAC." Shepard communicated into his comm chat.

Ashley observed the beacon with an intrigued glance suspended in her hazel eyes. The way it was glowing, it was nothing like what it was now when they had first dug it up. The curious marine moved ever closer to the subject of the questions which rattled her mind, only to feel an ethereal force suddenly pull on her body towards the beacon which lit up in a bright green color.

However, before she came within a foot of the glowing beacon, a pair of arms wrapped around her waist and overpowered whatever force had taken control of her body before throwing her away from the beacon.

Ashley sat up from where she had landed against the cold metal floor to see that the Commander had saved her, but now had taken her place. His body, now controlled by the same force she had been, was lifted off the ground in front of the beacon.

"Commander!" She cried out for him and attempted to stand, but the way she had before landed on her ankle caused her to fall back to the floor, barely catching herself with her hands. Ashley looked up the Commander to see that the green aura which surrounded the beacon began to engulf him instead, beholding Shepard in its misty green tendrils, as if it were embracing him, until the beacon then exploded and threw his unconscious body to the floor.

* * *

 **1\. While this is an Mass Effect 1 story, the weapons that are used will most likely be more from Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3. Although they'll be lacking the thermal clips that they have in Mass Effect 2 and 3.**

 **2\. It never made much sense to me how exactly Shepard knew there were only four bombs in the original Mass Effect game. Of course we (the viewer) knew about it because it was literally spelled out for us on the screen, but that doesn't explain why Shepard or any of the other squad mates (the characters) somehow knew that they had gotten all the charges once they disarmed four. Maybe there was some sort of scanning technology used to find the bombs or something else, but it still leaves us guessing and creates a disconnect between the viewer and the character. Which isn't necessarily bad in all cases, but in this one it is obvious reasons. So I switched up the dialogue a bit to compensate.**


	3. The Vision

**Disclaimer:** **Mass Effect and any music I use in this belong to their respective owners, not to me.**

* * *

 _"The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one's self to destiny." - Napoléon Bonaparte_

 **The Vision**

The cargo ship that he piloted landed softly against the cliff-side landing pad, its contents kept snug and safe by careful flying and tight restraints on their packaging.

Jarvis gave a sigh of relief before getting up out of his chair. It was his first time flying alone and the cargo he carried was beyond important. That was what is employer told him at least, but beyond that, he didn't ask any questions. The kind of money that was put up on the table if he delivered this ... it wasn't the sort of thing that would make one ask 'why'. With that kind of money he could buy one of those fancy apartments on the Citadel that was big enough to house the whole family.

He could just imagine the smile on his daughters' face when he and his wife announced to them that they wouldn't have to live in the citadel's slums anymore.

 _Hell, maybe we can even eat regularly from now on!_ He thought to himself, chuckling at his own dark humor as he exited the cargo ship and began to walk across the dusty promontory terrain towards a fuel station.

"Some fuel on three please," he told the speaker that was placed on the front of the small fuel station which appeared to be walled off on all sides.

"Sure. Coming right up," answered a voice that was deepened by the effects of the speaker.

"Thanks!" Jarvis replied almost a but cheerfully. He had to remind himself that it was a dangerous place way out here in the Attican Traverse, and that he shouldn't let the entire universe know he was walking on cloud nine from the money that would soon be his.

"Hey ... uh," he began, trying to draw attention away from the implications of his previous tone of voice with a new conversation subject, "so I was flying around a few miles back and, well, there was this crashed spaceship I saw. Do you know anything about that?"

"Spaceship?" The voice repeated the word, seemingly giving away that he in fact did not know of that spaceship that Jarvis saw earlier.

"Yep," Jarvis affirmed, "it looked pretty big from where I saw it. Like, really big, and I can't say for sure, but it looked like a batarian type too."

"I can't say I've heard about that before," the voice admitted.

"Someone should report that, right?" Jarvis asked. "It could be one of those slaver ships."

"Well, that's your decision to make," the voice reasoned, giving the pilot a choice.

Jarvis thought about it for a moment. Just reporting a simple rundown ship that was most likely abandoned anyways wouldn't cause him any trouble, right?

"Yeah ... I probably should," Jarvis concluded. "Got a phone or something I can use around here?"

"Sure. Right behind you," the voice directed to him.

"Thanks," Jarvis said with a smile, before turning around and walking down the ramp. Then sound of a pistol firing echoed suddenly, and was immediately followed by the feeling of a sharp pain in his back that knocked him down on his face.

Jarvis could hear footsteps drawing nearer and nearer as he groaned in agony at the white hot pain he felt in his back that tore right through his shields. He managed to turn his head just a small bit, and saw behind him a man with grey Hahne-Kedar armour and a Death Mask over his head with glowing white eye-slants on the helm.

"Just so you understand," the armoured man raised a carnifex pistol, pointing it straight at his head, "no one is going to find your ship either."

Eric grunted as the recoil of the heavy pistol firing vibrated throughout his body. He was still getting use to it along with most of the advanced equipment he had stolen from the Alliance.

That fool Anderson had tried to take him away from their trail, but he knew where to find them. The Alliance couldn't know he or that batarian ship was here, they would ruin everything; take the information on the crashed ship and lock it away in some datacash that would never be looked over again.

That was not going to happen.

He would find them using that data which was on the batarian ship. He'd free them and kill every last one of those damned slavers if he had to.

And then, they would be a family again.

He just needed to find them.

Suddenly, the sky above him began to turn a dark shade of red, the winds around him picked up fiercely, and a strange mechanical noise began to buzz in his ears. Clenching the sides of his helmet where is ears were, Eric dropped to the floor on his knees and threw off the Death Mask, but the awful noises were still there.

A bright light flashed against the ground he sat on from above, and his head turned to look up at its source.

Over the edge of the cliff-side, a giant squid-like machine, with five tentacle-like legs extending from its front end, in addition to six jointed legs extending from its body, appeared over the crimson horizon.

 _ **We enter soon the world in numbers beyond comprehension.** _ A voice whispered softly in his ear.

The machine, with its long tentacles, reached out and implanted its tendrils on the cliff-side only meters away from him, causing the ground below him to shake violently.

 ** _An army of destruction, we shall force the end of old and the beginning of new._**

Then, a single one of its purple tentacle legs rose and touched Eric on his forehead.

 _ **We mark the lands with blood, in fire we shall prevail.**_

 _ **We are tremendous.**_

 _ **We are the end of days.**_

 _ **We darken skies forever.**_

 _ **We force the Sun to fade.**_

 _ **We rise and fall in heaven.**_

 _ **We fall and rise again.**_

Images of bodies melting, cities collapsing and planets burning flashed through his mind. Over all the death and destruction he saw, some sort synthetic beings stood tall.

And Eric bore witness to it all.

 _ **Wipe your face of tears, Shepard.**_

 _ **We are ever marching.**_


	4. Politics

**NightingaleN7: That chapter was Shepard's vision given to him by the Prothean beacon. I know that in canon it happens right as he gets pulled up by the beacon, but I did a little twist and made it so his vision happens during his dreams. This was done mainly because I was also able to tie in the theme of Shepard's reoccurring nightmares of his past, which was what the first part of the chapter was.**

 **Disclaimer:** **Mass Effect and any music I use in this belong to their respective owners, not to me.**

* * *

 _"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable." - George Orwell._

 **Politics**

"Doctor!"

Eric turned and twisted where he lay, squeezing his eyes as a voice sounded in his ears.

"I think he's waking up!"

Using his arms to prop himself up from the medical bed, he opened his eyes and took in his surroundings.

"You had us worried there, Shepard." Doctor Chakwas walked up to him. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine." Shepard replied plainly. "What happened?" He asked before beginning to remember on his own.

"It was my fault." Another voice put in. Shepard turned to see the Gunner Sargeant from earlier, Ashley, standing on the other side of his bed with her arms crossed. "I triggered some type of energy field when I got close to it, you had to push me out of the way and-"

"No," Shepard interrupted her, "you did nothing wrong. I would have done the same if I was in your shoes. It's only protocol." He looked over to Chakwas. "Where is the Beacon now?"

"The Beacon was destroyed, there was a system overload or something, I'm not sure." Ashley explained as she walked up to his bed next to Chakwas so that they were not speaking to one another across the room. "You were knocked out cold, but the Lieutenant and I carried you back to the ship."

"Well done then, Gunnery Sargeant." Shepard complimented Ashley in a formal manner, but he did notice the small blush that appeared across the brunette woman's face.

"As far as physical matters go, you should be fine." Doctor Chakwas interrupted the two. "However," she continued, "I did detect some rather unusual brain activity such as abnormal beta waves. I also noticed an increase in your rapid eye movement. Signs usually associated with intense dreaming. I thought you said that you were no longer having those anymore, Commander. Is there something you would like to confess?" The doctor asked, obviously referencing his condition with reoccuring nightmares, the ones which he had told her were done and gone. But these dreams were different.

"I don't have nightmares." Shepard snapped at her, not wanting a stranger such as the Gunner Sargeant to hear of such things. "This was something else... it was a vision. There was... there was some sort of machine, it looked like some sort of squid-like creature, only made of metal. It was huge, bigger than any Citadel ship, even the Ascension." He explained, purposely leaving out the flashback premise of the vision. "I then saw... death, destruction and chaos. Some strange machines were killing everything, anything."

A moment of tension filled silence passed within the medical bay before Chakwas spoke up again.

"Well... that is... certainly interesting. I will have to add it to my report." She said before the door to the room opened suddenly.

"How is our X.O holding up?" Captain Anderson asked as he entered, and both Ashley and Shepard stood at attention.

"Besides a few... minor details, the Commader will be fine." Chakwas answered, having a hard time trying to describe his condition as 'fine'.

"That's good." Said Anderson. "However, I need to speak to the Commander, alone." He added.

"Aye aye, captain." Ashley raised her hand to a salute before taking her leave, the doctor following close behind her.

"Sounds like that beacon hit you hard, Shepard." The captain stated once the two women had left the room. "Are you sure that you're okay?"

"I will be fine, sir." Shepard responded, still standing up straight as he did.

"If I had a credit for every time you said that to me and been lying then I'd be able to buy off the entire Citadel government for a whole year."

"Your belief in my honesty is flattering." Shepard joked in a stale manner, his expression staying neutral the entire time.

Anderson, however, found it worth a laugh. "Speaking of lies," his laughter died down, "the Council is going to want answers on what happened down there."

"I have nothing to hide." Shepard replied. "The mission was not a failure, the objectives were merely changed midway, and I accommodated for them."

Anderson sighed grimly. "The Beacon was lost, but no matter what, I'll stand behind your report. What concerns me the most however isn't the Beacon, it's the _'other Turin'_. Saren."

"I remember him," Shepard recalled the stories Anderson had told him, "you two use to work-"

"I don't need a retelling of the story, Shepard." Anderson interrupted, scowling at the memories his protégé brought up. "All that needs to be said is that you and I both know how powerful he is within Citadel space, and how much trouble he could cause if he really is working with the Geth. I don't know how or why, but if he is, it would spell big trouble for humanity."

"What do we do then, sir?" Shepard asked.

"We go to the Council and expose him, then once we have the Council on our side he'll lose all of his Specter privileges. Then... we'll take him and his Geth army down."

"Understood, sir."

Anderson again sighed, rubbing his temples with his hand before continuing. "Shepard, this assignment is going to require... a different approach. You won't be able to catch Saren by acting like... well, acting like you. Like a weapon. Like you're just a suit of armour with a gun who follows only orders."

Shepard looked at the Captain sideways with a narrowed brow. "Are you implying that I should disobey-"

"What I'm implying, Shepard, is that you will need to think for yourself." Anderson interrupted. "After Saren has his Specter status revoked, the Council may very well appoint you as one of their own to help you track him down. Being a Specter means you'll be operating outside my command, on your own." He knew that Eric would always be stuck in his foolish 'soldier' mentality, but there was one thing which Anderson believed just might shift the podium of power in his mind.

"Can you do accomplish that, Shepard? Be your own, self-subistent military officer? Or is that too much for you?"

 _A challenge._

Shepard simply shrugged and answered, "That depends, sir. Is that an order?"

 **\- The Citadel -**

Ashley's eyes squinted and she had to hold herself back from raising her arm to cover her eyes. Having spent so long in the dully lit Normandy, the bright lights of the Presidium were almost blinding. Gradually, she got use to lighting as she walked towards ambassador Udina's office along with Shepard and Kaidan.

She had been staring at the former of the two's back for the entire walk from the Normandy. He hadn't spoken a word to her since he'd awoken. There had been a moment on the Normandy where he walked past her, and maybe that was supposed to be the moment when she made the first move in starting a conversation, but whatever chance there was then slipped through her fingers.

Who could blame her though? The Lion of Elysium was not a man which a mere Gunnery Chief like herself could randomly chat with like he was just another solider.

 _Come on, Ash. That's not the way a Williams thinks._ She berated herself in her head as they came to their destination.

"You two, stay here." Shepard turned around briefly to say to them, before turning back to the ambassador's door.

"Are you sure you want to get chewed out by Udina by yourself, sir?" She asked, and Shepard turned to look back at her.

"Don't second guess me, Gunnery Chief." His words were harsh, but his tone was soft. "You don't seem like the type who enjoys politics anyhow." He added before entering the office and leaving her and Kaidan by themselves outside.

Kaidan sighed and leaned up against one of the white Presidium walls then crossed his arms over one another. He'd been the only one on the Normandy to talk to her beyond procedural introductions.

Ashley remembered their talk in the mess hall which they had only minutes before Shepard had awoke.

 _So, what do you think of the Commander?_ He had asked her.

Ashley do not know what to respond with at first. She didn't want to seem like a star-struck fangirl who had just med her externet idol, although that was closer to the truth that she would like to admit.

 _He seems like a capable soldier_. She responded with as much professionalism as she could.

 _That... is a more accurate description than you could possibly imagine_.

Ashley didn't know what he'd meant by that, and since they had been called to the bridge almost the moment he had said it, she didn't get any chance to ask him for clarification.

Maybe that would just be something she'd have to figure out on her own.

The door to Udina's office slid open, and out walked Anderson, Udina and Shepard.

"What's going on, sir?" Kaidan asked, pushing off the wall he leaned against.

"The Council wants to shield their prodigy Specter from our accusations." Shepard explained as Udina and Anderson walked past them. "So we're going to meet them face to face, along with Saren."

"Do you think they'll consider anything we say, sir?" Ashley questioned as Shepard began to lead them towards a Citadel Rapid Transport station.

"No." He answered without turning to look back at her.

 **\- An hour later -**

"So much for diplomacy." Muttered Kaidan as they entered the elevator leaving the Citadel Tower.

"Good riddance." Shepard added, having overheard the words the Lieutenant spoke under his breath.

"I can't believe that they'd ignore all the evidence we've gathered just so they don't look bad when their 'perfect Specter' gets caught red-handed!" Ashley snarled as the elevator music began to play.

"Calm down, Williams. We still have a chance to expose Saren for his crimes." Kaidan tried to pacify the fiery woman. "We just need to follow up on this 'Harkin' lead."

"To what end? So the Council can dismiss that evidence as well?" Ashley shot back before looking over to the Commander, who had been relatively silent throughout the Council hearing, only speaking up once or twice during its entirety. "What do you make of all this, sir?"

"Obvious bias on the Councils part," he began, not even bothering to look in Ashley or Kadian's direction as he did, "you're right about that, Gunnery Chief. The eye-witness testimony should have tipped the scales in our favor, but the Council merely denied it as 'lunacy'." He began to analysis the hearing. "Although it would have helped if we had gotten a sketch artist for Saren's face. They also completely blew over the fact that Garrus was not allowed to access any high-grade files in his investigation, and that the little time they gave him to complete his investigation would not permit him to travel to Eden Prime for any interviews or forensic investigation. Going back to the dock worker, Powell, his testimony should have been taken seriously. A simple dock worker like him has nothing to lose, after all his entire colony was wiped out. He wasn't rambling like that other man, Manuel, was and could see clearly a turian who looked and spoke exactly like Saren kill Nihlus. A short interview would have given any investigators time to assess his mental stability, but the Council didn't give Garrus any time to do that. That, along with an autopsy of Nihlus' body would have revealed that he was in fact shot in the back of the head."

"Wait a second," Kaidan stepped closer to Shepard, "if you knew all of this stuff, why didn't you bring it up during the hearing?"

"I'm a soldier, not a politician."

Kaidan opened his mouth to argue, but before he could say anything, the elevator came to a halt and the door slid open.

"You seem like you'd make a good one, sir." Ashley spoke up in what was supposed to a compliment as they exited the elevator.

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that, Gunnery Chief." Shepard responded coldly.

"Well, I didn't mean to- I didn't want imply that-" Ashley's stuttering attempt to cover up what she said was stopped as she looked behind her to see Kaidan put a hand on her shoulder and shake his head. She simply sighed and continued to follow the Commander to Harkin's location. There wasn't much distance to cover before they came upon a bright red sign that read 'Chora's Den'.

"Light-years away from where humanity started and here we are in a club with men drooling over half naked woman shaking their asses." Ashley scolded as they entered the strip club.

"Yeah, not the kind of place I'd spend my time at." Kaidan commented, giving him a few points of respect in Ashley's book.

"Although, the view is pretty sweet."

All of said points lasted about three seconds.

Ashley turned and furrowed her brow at the Lieutenant before flicking him on the ear.

"Owww! Can't a man enjoy his hormonal instincts for one moment without being subject to a woman's wraith?" Kaidan cupped his hand over his ear and moaned in pain like a child, causing Ashley to break into a fit laughter as Kaidan's face turned a dark shade of red.

"I got what we came for."

Ashley's laughter and Kaidan's blushing came to a stop as Shepard walked up to them.

"Move out." The Commander ordered, brushing in-between the two as he walked out of the club.

 _Guess it's not his type of place either_. Ashley thought as she followed the Commander. The three made their way through the wards until they stood to look over a scenic view of the Citadel wards' traffic.

"This place is huge!" Ashley exclaimed as she leaned over a railing. She was never a regular visitor to the Citadel, let alone to the Wards, but now that she's seen the view... she might reconsider that.

"It's amazing how multicultural this place is." Kaidan commented as he leaned over the same railing next to her.

"If only they accepted humans into the melting pot as well." Ashley brooded as she gazed at the skyline.

"We'll get in soon enough, don't you worry." Kaidan soothed.

"The Lieutenant is right." Shepard put in, walking in the space between Ashley and Kaidan but not leaning against the railing as they did, and instead holding his arms behind his back. "The prevailing ideology among humans may be different than the Turians or the Asari, but we are at our core, very similar beings. At least emotionally. Hate, anxiety, sorrow, and even love."

"If you expect to get me in a tinfoil miniskirt and thigh high boots, I want dinner first."

Shepard and Kaidan had to take a moment to process what they had just heard. Both of them turned their heads to their rights to look at Ashley, who they'd both thought to be the last person to say such a thing.

"Did you just have a stroke, Gunnery Chief?" Shepard seriously asked.

 _God help me_. _Did I just say that?_ The Gunnery Chief gulped as she felt the weight of the Lion of Elysium's gaze bear down on her.

"...Yes." Ashley answered simply with a blank stare, and without another word they left for the Med Clinic.


	5. Fist

**NightingaleN7, chapter 4: Yeah, people do get caught up in the beginning a lot. I think it's due mostly to the fact that you basically are given the entirety of the citadel to explore within the first two hours of the game, well maybe not the entirety of it but a lot of it at least, and so people get caught up in trying to have their story include every bit of the citadel and all the interactions that are in that bit of the game within the first couple of chapters, which usually ends up extending what should be three or four chapters into seven or eight. That's the problem with a lot of RPG fanfics because there is just so much to explore about them, I think it even happened to me in the Dragon Age fanfic I'm writing now. But I'm probably over-analyzing this anyhow. Also, glad I made you laugh :)**

 **Guest, chapter 1: Thanks, friend. I'll make sure to keep you guys updated on whether to big guys up at bioware decide to put me to work, but I doubt it haha.**

 **Acedew, chapter 2: I designed Eric with the idea of partly making him the opposite of a lot of Msheps on this site. More specifically, there was this one story, I forget what it's called, where it was a two shep fic and well basically... he was a, for lack of better words, a bitch. Femshep was all cool and badass and Mshep just really sat in her shadow. Not trying to call out whoever wrote that story, or actually I think it may be still be being written, but I really think that Shepard, and heroes in general, should be the opposite of that. Emotional struggles can be good for character development, but there is a certain point where you need to have some point where they over come their angst or whatever and start being an actual hero. By hero I don't necessarily good either. But hey, that's just my opinion.**

 **Disclaimer: Mass Effect and any music I use in this belong to their respective owners, not to me.**

* * *

 _"When you recognize evil, speak out against it, and give no truces to your enemies." - Hávamál, St. 127_

 **Fist**

 **\- A privately owned warehouse in the slums of the Wards -**

Things were looking up.

A powerful gang leader in the citadel Wards who went by the name of Fist concluded as he leaned back in his chair, propping his feet on the control panel in front of him. His men had managed to subdue the quarian girl who had whatever it was that Saren wanted. Now all he had to do was wait for the rogue specter's agents to get here; for whatever reason they wanted the girl.

Suddenly, a loud buzz rang in his ears and a bright red light flashed on the control panel.

"Identify yourself." Fist spoke into the comm unit on the control panel. He hated having to tread outside of the Eclipse nightclub, but the money that handing over whatever this quarian girl had on her to Saren would make him one of the richest men in the galaxy. The gang boss couldn't help but feel his mouth water as he thought of the millions, no - billions of credits this suit rat would get him. Now, he had to focus. A random cargo ship had just buzzed into the empty lot right outside of the compound which they were holding the quarian in, and he needed to know what the hell it was doing showing up uninvited.

"Package delivery." A voice replied back over the comm.

"We didn't order any packages." Fist shot back. "Get the hell out of here."

"You sure about that? I don't really think an order of two tons red sand would be something you'd sent to a wrong addr-"

"I-I-I mean, YES! That is my order!" Fist retracted. He didn't care what idiot sent a supply of red sand that huge to the wrong place, it would be his now. "Stay right there." He told the person on the other end of the comm before cutting it and opening a new line. "Rogers, get down there and secure that shipment."

"Yes sir." Sargeant Rogers replied before cutting off the comm. Fist leaned back against his chair and rested his feet up against the control panel, relaxing in the afterglow of having another addition to the list of fortunes he would reap today.

 **\- The shipping lot -**

"Step out of the ship, slowly." Rogers ordered loud enough for the pilot of the cargo ship to hear. "And keep your hands above your head." On either of the human Sargeant's flanks stood two heavily armoured door to the cargo ship then began to open, rising vertically before a single man emerged from its shade.

"Are you the only one on this thing?" Rogers asked, gesturing to the ship with his avenger rifle.

"You won't find anyone else on it." The man in dark armour answered, walking forwards with his hands still raised over his head. Rogers looked to the krogan to his left, then to his right.

"This guy doesn't sit right with me." He stated to the krogan on his right, who grunted in agreement.

 **(Five minutes later)**

"This guy is my fuckin' hero, man!" Rogers proclaimed after bursting out with an uproar of laughter as Rogers, the two Krogan and Fist listened to pilot's story.

"Oh come on, don't tell me you guys wouldn't have don't the same damn thing!" The pilot declared, chuckling as he did.

"That's one hell of a story, but we better wrap this up." Said Fist, calming his laughter. "I've got some important... business dealings later today. They're on their way right now actually."

"If by business you mean giving away that damn quarian to that specter guy." Rogers grunted off to the side.

"For God's sake, Rogers. Can you not keep your mouth shut for one second?" Fist asked with a sigh.

"Blame me if you will, but those damn aliens, especially those quarians, are just trouble." Rogers replied indignantly. "They say that they're cool with humanity and all that, but you know that those sons of bitches would put a laser beam straight through our heads faster than the German blitz conquered France if we gave 'em the chance!"

"Hey!" Another human turned around in his chair from where he worked on a computer to join the conversation. "That's bigotry and intolerance!"

"Oh yeah?" Rogers turned to face the mouthy technician. "Well you're being intolerant of my intolerance!"

"Both of you, quiet!" Fist shouted. "Even with all the important crap she's hiding, the only thing anyone would ever see in that stupid quarian is one thing and one thing only... those fricking hips!" He laughed heartily at his own crude joke, and almost all the others, even the krogans in the room, joined in. All but one.

"All right, I'll take her."

Their laughter came to a sudden halt, and all eyes in the room looked to the supposed cargo pilot who seemed just another easy-going, joking guy until he uttered those words just moments ago.

"What are you talking about?" Fist asked carefully, standing up from his chair. He was only half sure that he ears didn't misunderstand the man who stood before him.

"What I mean is, my name is Shepard, and I'm going to kill you and every last person in this compound before I take your prisoner and her audio banks to the council so that scum Saren gets what's coming to him." Shepard explained coldly to the men who he had laughed with just moments ago.

"...Huh?" Rogers asked no one in particular, the confusion clearly evident in his words as he looked back and forth between Fist and Shepard.

A moment of tension passed in-between the two, Fist narrowed his brow, and Shepard's expression stayed emotionless under his helmet. Fist swiftly reached for his sidearm and before he could raise it to fire Shepard swung his foot up and kicked the Kessler pistol out of his hand to the left and into the face of an unprepared Rogers, who fell to the floor while clutching his face. With his other leg, Shepard swung his foot into Fist's neck faster than he could blink, knocking the gang boss out cold. Before Fist's unconscious body hit the ground, Shepard rolled out-of-the-way of the two krogan bodyguards, who tried to use their armoured heads as a weapon to hit him with.

He turned around to face the two beasts, like wolves they showed their teeth. Shepard pulled his combat knife from the sheath on his right hip, its stainless steel shined and flashed as Shepard took aim and threw it into the chest of the man who had an issue with Roger's comment's about the quarian earlier.

The krogan took this as a challenge. This human had disarmed himself of all weapons, and in doing so issued to them a statement. A statement that he could beat them without those weapons, and with but his bare hands.

They threw down their shotguns against the floor, and released their battle cries in preparation.

Shepard smiled under his helmet as the two broke into a charge at him.

This wasn't his first time fighting hand to hand against these creatures.

He remembered the hordes of krogan that he faced during the blitz. After landing on the plains outside Illyria, Elysium's capital, they marched towards the city tattered banners and bloody flags. Their feet stamped against the earth with numbers that shook the city to its core.

Shepard watched them from the top floor of one of Illyria's great skyscrapers. The korgan had chosen to enter Illyria from the south side, where the city's defenses were at her weakest. He had already ordered both the civilian and military population to defend the north, east and west, where the besiegers of the city had focused most of their forces. The approaching krogan army must have numbered in the thousands, whilst the remaining men in Illyria not engaged in active combat on the ground or in the air numbered but hundreds.

Shepard remembered looking down at the army strong and vast, and remembering who the krogan were as he did. The krogan were a hard, ferocious, militant species. The krogan were warriors.

But they weren't the only ones.

Shepard remembered the great heroes of yore, Arminius of Germania, Ragnar Lodbrok and Odysseus the Cunning. He remembered that humanity was not like the fragile asari, the stern turians or the tinkering quarians.

Humanity was a race of warriors, they had only forgotten who they were.

Shepard decided on that day he would remind them, and every other species in the galaxy, who they were.

It didn't take much effort to down the two krogan with but a slash then and a side-step there. When they at last fell dead to the floor, Shepard's eyes flickered over to the control panel, where a wounded Rogers slammed his fist down on the big red button in the center of the console. Suddenly, the lights throughout the compounds turned off and flashing red alarms that blared sirens replaced them. Rogers smiled one last time before the blade of Shepard's knife landed firmly in the back of his skull.

"Bull's-eye." Shepard complimented himself before walking over and pulling his knife out from the dead man's head. He then reached over for the pistol which he kicked out of Fist's hand, and then pointed it at a weak spot on the metal.

On the next floor level below him, a human merc who was left to guard the red sand that wasn't there looked nervously from side to side under the flashing red lights before he saw a floor panel from the next floor up fall only a few meters in front of him.

"W-Who's there?!" He called to whomever was making the noises that sounded through the pipes above him. A pair of cold hands wrapped around his neck before the sound of bones being snapped echoed throughout the empty lot.

"Compound clear." Shepard clarified, and the body of the man whose neck he snapped falling limp to the floor as his invisibility cloak disappeared and his own form flickered into view. The door of the cargo ship opened behind him.

"Tell me you at saved one for me." Wrex, a Krogan he'd picked up and who'd given him the location of the compound, asked as he emerged from the shadows of the cargo ship behind him.

"You really do only think of yourself, don't you, Wrex?" Kaidan questioned as he followed behind the krogan.

"He can't help it really. It's just apart of his DNA." Garrus, a turian who Shepard had recruited after seeing his honed aiming skills, commented as he too emerged from the hold of the cargo ship.

"And people say humans are the racist ones." Ashely mumbled to no one in particular, herself being the last one to exit from the darkness of the ship.

"You still haven't answered my question, Shepard." Wrex turned to Shepard, who then looked back at the krogan before drawing his gun and turning to shoot one of the steel wall pillars inside the warehouse, causing the platform it held up to collapse. Wrex smiled a toothy grin as the dust cleared and revealed Fist had fallen to ground with it.

Fist hacked up blood as he sat up, only stopping when he noticed Shepard approaching him, followed closely by a familiar krogan with red battlearmor.

"Wait!" He yelled shakily, holding out his hand to try to tell them to spare his life. "You-You can't kill me!"

"You sure about that?" Wrex grunted, pulling out his M-300 Claymore shotgun and holding its barrel only inches away from Fist's forehead.

"Why can't we kill you?" Shepard asked, crossing his arms over one another as he stood over Fist.

"Because! Because I-I know!" Fist began to laugh suddenly, pointing a single finger up at Shepard.

"What do you know?" Shepard continued to question him, his patience thinning.

Fist coughed out more blood down on the floor before looking back up at Shepard.

"Because I know you're not the only Shepard out there. I know where your sister is."

Before the air could gather in his lungs to laugh again at the unprepared commander, Fist saw a blur of black before realizing Shepard grabbed him by the armour around his neck and raised high him above the ground.

"Where is she?" Shepard growled like a beast spawned from hell, but Fist still mustered a bloody grin as he was held up by his neck.

Suddenly gunfire began to ring through the air.

"Get behind something!" Kaidan called out as a gunship landed next to the ship Shepard had hidden them in with its guns firing at them as soldiers began to unload from it.

Fist grunted and raised his knee to knock the air out of Shepard, causing the commander to drop him to the ground. His feet carried him away quickly from the distracted strangers who had attacked him and the soldiers of Saren who had just arrived. He lost count of the flights of stairs he ran up before finally bursting through a door on to the roof. His eyes stayed glued to the red skycar that stood only meters away from the door as he stumbled towards it. His vision was still a blur from the fall, but he still looked behind him to check if the man who tricked him was following him, sighing in relief when it seemed like there was nothing there.

"God damn..." Fist sighed again as he sat down in the leather seat of the skycar. His body still ached as the skycar lifted off the ground and buzzed away from the roof of the warehouse, but he could not be more relieved that he'd gotten away.

However, a small flash of a red light on the dashboard startled him. Fist squinted to see what the blinking red letters under the light read.

 ** _Seatbelt not on front or backseat rider._**

A pair of gloved hands suddenly wrapped around his throat.

"Where-"

Fist's eyes almost popped out of his head as he looked and saw in the rearview mirror the same man in black amour sitting in the darkness of the backseat.

"-is-"

His hands began to desperately reach for the manual drive wheel in front of him.

"-Jane?!"

Fist ignored Shepard and grasped the steering wheel. Gripping it with all the might left within his bruised body, Fist turned the wheel a complete ninety degree angle, sending the skycar crashing into a nearby landing pad.

The crowds of the wards watched as the stray skycar slammed into the top of the citadel's finest resorts. C-Sec officers bumped their way through the masses of asari, turians humans and other species as they stormed the cylinder shaped building through one of the two entrances, the other taken up by civilians being evacuated.

Fist groaned in pain as he pushed himself out from cab of the burning skycar. By some miracle, the force of the crash had not broken the glass roof around the landing pad the skycar landed on. He managed to stand up, barely. The pain was like spikes in his feet with ever step he took towards the door that would lead him to the stairs down to the ground floor.

He knew that C-Sec was probably already halfway up to the top by now, but he would rather kneel to those pigs than take his chances with that… freak.

This day, his luck had indeed turned to its worst.

Then, a train hit him.

That is what it felt like. Tackled to the floor, Fist's body cracked the glass below him and his forehead bounced off of it That same black gloved hand from before then grabbed his short, cropped brown hair and used it to roll him on his back.

Fist blinked weakly and frowned when he saw that same, faceless man named Eric holding him down by sitting on his waist.

Shepard snarled and brought his armoured fist down on to Fist's left cheek, causing his head to snap to the right and blood to shoot out of his mouth on to the cracked glass before doing the same to his right cheek.

As Fist held on to his consciousness by a thread, he heard one question snarled at him.

"Where is my sister?!"

And he had one answer.

"Fuck... you."

Shepard roared like a primal beast, blinded by anger, hatred and all those emotions which he would have kept down, tucked away deep inside of him.

But not today.

Shepard reached over to the skycar's loose tailgate cable. Fist could do nothing to stop him as he wrapped the cable tight around the crimelord's neck.

"Where-"

Shepard grabbed Fist by the collar on his armour, raising him high and slamming him back down against the glass, cracking it even more.

"-is-"

He slammed Fist's upper body again into the glass again, the cracks splitting into a pool of white below them.

"She?!'

"I-I don't know!" Fist finally cracked, his voice barely audible as the cable strangled his throat and blood. "I just know that she is alive, I heard her name come up once in a gang meeting. She's not apart of any, just has worked with them before. She is alive, that's all I know, I swear!"

Shepard took in the information slowly, his heart then began to beat faster and fast as the fires from the crash burned around him.

Fist told him he knew where she was, but he didn't.

He lied.

 **"Liar!"**

Eric hated liars.

He grabbed Fist by the collar again, but this time, as he hoisted Fist up high, Shepard attached the clip of the cable to the same cable tied around Fist's neck.

Time seemed to slow as Shepard used both his hands to slam Fist down one last time, shattering the glass below them. Shepard caught one last look of the expression on Fist's face as they feel with the broken glass. He saw in him anger and hatred, a snarling man who could not accept fate.

Fate would certainly accept him however.

Then, time returned. Shepard tumbled down face first on to a floor only a few meters below him. The broken glass he landed on crumbled as he pushed himself on to his back. He looked up and saw Fist's lifeless body slowly swinging back and forth over the circular hole in the center of the building that went down to the bottom floor.

A heavy sigh left the commander's lips under his helmet as he stood himself up against the bits of glass on the carpeted floor. Suddenly, bright light flashed behind him. Shepard turned, his visor kept clear by the augmentations in his helmet as he looked into the light, and saw below through the glass walls in front of him a spotlight pointed at him and the body hanging behind him.

The door several feet to his left burst open.

"Hands up!" A turian C-sec officer in black armour with red detailing took point, followed by several lower ranking officers on his flanks. He looked up, and lowered his Avenger rifle when he noticed the limp body that swung softly by a cable over the center of the room.

What he did not notice however was the man cloaked in invisibility who quietly snuck away with blood on his hands.

"Clear the room." He ordered his two subordinates whilst not turning his head from the hanged man. "I bet Garrus has something to do with this." Executor Pallin mumbled to himself.

* * *

 **Question, guys... is hanging someone with a car cable worth changing the story's rating from T to M?**


	6. Released

**Aramus13, chapters 1-5: Thanks for the great reviews man :)**

 **Acedew, chapter 5: Yep. Shepard is like that. Although he isn't entirely one-dimensional, but that's for the story to show you, not me.**

 **nicomnovillo, chapter 5: That actually wasn't intentional! I didn't even realize until you pointed out the comparison. Thanks. The Modern Warfare series has an amazing in my opinion, but that is usually over-shadowed by the bad rap it's multiplayer community gets.**

 **Nightingale N7:, chapter 5: Hmmm, I suppose I won't have people being lynched every chapter so it's fine as T. Also, Eric's sister is going to be anything but a mention actually. And thanks for compliment! You're a pretty amazing writer yourself (I've been reading your story, _Parallel_ , a lot recently.) I highly suggest anyone and everyone who reads this story to go check it out along with the rest of her page :)**

 **Disclaimer: Mass Effect and any music I use in this belong to their respective owners, not to me.**

* * *

 _"When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his son, both cry." - William Shakespeare._

 **Released**

 **\- Citadel Dock 422 -**

Anderson sighed. He knew this would have to be done eventually, but yet he'd still hoped it would have come under more... favorable circumstances.

At the moment, he had two alliance marines, one turian, one krogan, and one quarian stood in front of him. The five of them awaited one thing and one thing only:

An explanation.

* * *

Kaidan was livid.

It felt like every nerve in his body was on fire, scorching his heart with hate and anger. One question rattled through the young lieutenant's mind.

 _Why **him**?_

What made **him** their choice?

 **He** was obviously unable to act on his own without losing control of himself. **He** had to be ordered and directed by an authority like Anderson to be of any use.

 _Right?_

 _Of course. Absolutely._ Kaidan reassured himself in his head.

So why was **he** the one they chose for the role of the first human specter?

* * *

Ashley was worried.

What had happened to him?

What caused him to abandon the mission objective, the quarian, and chase after some random thug?

He was known throughout the alliance for being nothing but a machine. Shore leave table-talk told of his unbreakable devotion to the alliance and his legendary ruthlessness when it came to completing the mission at all costs.

But yet, when Kaidan called his name as he watched Fist escape deeper into the compound, he did not even turn around to acknowledge the lieutenant before running after the gang boss.

He hadn't spoken a word to her or anyone else besides Anderson, Udina and the council since he disappeared into the warehouse after Fist. Just stared blankly, his mysterious eyes covered by the darkness of his visor.

Ashley wondered if she would ever see what was truly lied behind the blackness of his visor.

* * *

Garrus was impressed.

This human managed to take down one of the citadel's more powerful gang leaders, escape from the scene of the crime, and be crowned the first human specter, all within the same day.

Garrus knew that the human was probably getting yelled by the sickly looking man in the white suit, but still... hanging that scum Fist by the neck in front of thousands of onlookers was pretty badass, in his opinion.

 _Taking justice in your own hands... nice, Shepard._

* * *

Wrex wondered how Shepard planned on paying him back for stealing his kill.

* * *

Tali did not know what to think.

There was this human... he'd saved her apparently. She had only over heard the gunfire from her cell, and only caught a glimpse of him after he'd killed Fist. After handing over the geth data that brought Saren to justice, the man had been made the first human specter.

Or so she had been told.

The man in the white suit, Udina, he didn't allow her to travel with him to meet with the council to present the evidence, along with the turian Garrus and the krogan Wrex. He told them that the presence of aliens at the coördination ceremony of the first human specter would downplay humanity's achievement.

 _Bosh'tet._ Tali swore to herself as she tried to imagine what sort of things the politician was telling Shepard about.

She had hopes that the commander would be a kinder person to her once they were working together.

* * *

"You will all be working in close proximity with the commander for an extended period." Anderson began to address the five souls before him on the citadel docks next to the parked Normandy.

As if they had drifted away in thought before that, they snapped their attention back to the alliance captain once he spoke.

"Therefore, you will need to hear the full story of why he is the way he is." Anderson closed his eyes, taking a deep breath before opening them again. "Why he's a soldier."

"Excuse me, Sir." Kaidan broke in. "I don't believe this is necessary. I can give them access to Shepard's files once we're on board the ship, Sir."

"Lieutenant, the only thing you'll be showing them is black ink. I've read his files, even the parts the Alliance censors didn't want me to. Shepard has made entire terminus gangs disappear. His techincal rank isn't even that of an ordinary soldier anymore. 'Hyper-lethal vector' is what the brass' official term for soldiers like him are. The only thing is... there isn't anyone else like him. But I'm getting off track." Anderson shook his head before turning away from the five of them and grasping his hands firmly behind his back as he gazed at the citadel skyline in front of him.

"You all have heard of the Elysium Biltz before, and how a young marine named Shepard took command of the situation after all his superiors were killed in combat and routed the ground forces of the invasion. But that is about all you know of him and his past."

"You see, Eric wasn't always a soldier. He was once a child. He had a father, a mother, an older brother and a little sister... one big, happy family. Until one day slavers attacked his home planet of Mindoir when he was only thirteen. It's estimated they outnumbered the alliance forces stationed there by thirty-five to one. They killed... everyone... the entire population... just, dead... or gone. The bodies we found accounted for 98.4 of the colony's total population, the rest were bound in chains and sold into slavery. All but one."

"How did he survive?" Tali out of all of them spoke up, her voice reflecting the stunned feeling that reverberated with her.

Anderson looked back halfway at the quarian before turning back to look at the skyline. "To this day... no one knows. While alliance troops were shifting through the ruble for survivors, they turned around and suddenly found a young man standing amongst the ruins. Shepard has never told us how he survived the attack when everyone around him died."

"Not everyone it seems now." Wrex corrected.

Anderson sighed again. "That... we will get to later." He said before returning to Shepard's past. "I was there on Mindoir, as part of the first rebuilding effort. I meet him there. He was so...young. His eyes were so much brighter then. The only thing on his mind however wasn't rebuilding, it was joining the alliance. He told me that he wanted to make sure no one would ever of had to suffer the pain and lose he had gone through, and... I believed him. He sounded so sincere and his cause was so noble. So I took him under my wing. I made sure he had the best training given to him, the best books to study, the best weapons to practice with. I gave him everything, and for years he absorbed it brilliantly, comprehending thoroughly everything I taught him. I began to see in the boy who I took in from the ruins of the colony of Mindoir as something I knew I could never have... a son."

 _Damn it, Anderson._ He berated himself, forcing back emotion he knew he couldn't show in public. _Don't choke now. Pull yourself together._

"And then," Anderson continued, "he ran away."

"He left a note on his desk for me. It told me he needed to find his family, and that while he was grateful for all I had taught him and would put it to good use, he could never act with enough freedom to find his family whilst having alliance red tape holding him down."

 _Don't choke, Anderson._

"The alliance found him eventually, but not after he took down a dozen slave ship own his own. When they brought him to me, I should have been furious with the boy, I should have yelled at him, been angry, but... I just... I wrapped my arms around him and told him never to do that to me again."

 _Whatever you do, don't choke._

"That was when the brass removed him from my command. Put him under some hotshot named Johnson, and sent him out to the far reaches of citadel space. They said that he was going to be out there to 'investigate foreign lifeforms', but I knew they just wanted to keep me away from him. When I saw him two years later, just months before the Blitz, I saw why they wanted to keep him. They turned him into what he is today. They changed him, turned him into... into a soldier. They killed Eric, and brought forth from his ashes another being, and slapped the label 'Commander Shepard' on him. As if he were just another product out of a factory line."

Anderson turned back around and faced those who'd been listening to him. "Now, I know you all know by now what caused Shepard to break into a chase after Fist and ultimately kill him. That is, the possibility that his younger sister, Jane, being alive. It is not probable that she is still alive today, however... her body was never identified amongst the dead on Mindoir. Shepard has only ignored orders once in his life, and that was to find his real family. With all that has happened recently with Eden Prime, Saren, and being made a Specter, if his sister did somehow escape from slavery and is still alive today with connections to gangs on the citadel, then this mission just got a lot more complicated-"

The elevator door on the other end of the dock slid open suddenly. Out stepped the human ambassador to the council and the first human specter, walking side by side.

"Captain Anderson, have you told them of the changes yet?" Udina asked, getting right into business.

Anderson sighed. He supposed that would be all he'd be able to tell them. They would have to learn the rest on their own.

"No, not yet, Ambassador." He spoke whilst walking towards the pair, stopping in front of Shepard. "Commander," he addressed the specter, "as of this moment, the Normandy is yours."

* * *

Kaidan silently curled his hand into a fist unbeknownst to those he stood with.

 _ **He** doesn't deserve this!_

* * *

Ashley felt a content smile curl up on her lips.

 _After all he's been through I'm surprised they don't just give him the entire 5th Fleet._

* * *

"We won't be working together directly for a while now, Commander." Anderson addressed him formally in front of the ambassador. "Consider this a parting gift for now, even though I'll be here at the citadel if you ever need anything."

"Understood, Captain." Shepard addressed him, not using the word 'sir' for the first time in many years with Anderson.

"Shepard," Anderson began, "I know you are troubled by what Fist said about your sister, but you have to understan-"

"It won't interfere with the mission." Shepard stopped him before he could go any further.

"Oh... that is... good to hear." Anderson did not believe him, but none the less accepted the lie for now.

He then realized that this may be the last time he ever saw the boy turned-man whom he once considered family. The world within his head suddenly began fade into memories.

 _Mr. Anderson, what does this mean?_

He looked into the cold, black visor that covered Shepard's blue eyes, who stood directly in front of him.

 _That is a map of our galaxy, Eric. It shows in detail all the regions of known space._

He remembered how they looked before.

 _You mean there are parts of space that no one has been before?_

Happy...

 _Absolutely! There are still so many places in our galaxy which anyone beyond the galaxy's natives have yet to discover._

Curious...

 _Wow! That's awesome! Do you think I could be the one discover those places?_

Vivacious...

 _I wouldn't doubt it for a second. You're going to do great things one day, son._

Alive.

"Captain?"

Anderson snapped out of his trance. He looked down and noticed Shepard's hand outstretched to him.

"Oh, yes." He shook himself back into reality. "My apologies." Anderson spoke as he grasped Shepard's hand with his own.

"It has been an honor serving with you, Captain." Shepard saluted him before turning to Udina and shaking his hand as well.

Anderson wondered what the two had spoken while he had explained Shepard's story to the others, but brushed the question off of his mind for now.

"I will keep this vessel up to par." The commander nodded to the both of them before turning to leave. "You have my word."

Anderson watched as the other five followed behind him. He saw Kadian shoot him one last, cold glance before entering the air-lock. However, the jealous lieutenant's glare was not what troubled the aged alliance soldier.

 _Stay safe, Eric._ He thought as he heard the soft 'whoosh' of the air _-_ lock.

 _I know you'll do a better job than I ever could have done._

* * *

 **Next chapter, the new crew of the Normandy gets to know each other and their new leader.**


	7. People Person

**NightingaleN7, chapter 6: Thank YOU for all the reviews you've been giving. Both your thoughts and the effort are much appreciated :) To answer your questions: Yes and no for the first one. Kaidan and Shepard's relationship will certainly not be the most friendly, however I do want to avoid simply bashing Kaidan's character and move towards more a conflict of morals, beliefs and philosophies. To your second question: Shep is a colonist, yes, but I have done a bit of extra modifying for his military career. But I won't spoil anything.**

 **OBSERVER01, chapter 6: Kaidan definitely has issues with Eric. But whether they come from simple jealousy or moral disgust with Shepard's actions, or both, is still up for questioning.**

 **Aramus13, chapter 6: Yep. Although there is much more that they did to change him than what I've already shown.**

* * *

 _"Self-denial and self-discipline, however, will be recognized as the outstanding qualities of a good soldier." - William Lyon Mackenzie King_

 **People Person**

 **\- The SSV Normandy SR-1 -**

The elevator doors slid open softly in front of her. The large amount of space within it still surprised her, but she supposed that it was necessary for military vessels such as this.

"Ms. Zora."

Tali almost jumped out of her suit. She walked into the elevator thinking she was alone, but when she turned her head to her right she then saw the commander standing quietly next to her.

"Oh!" She quickly tried to recover from her surprise. "Hello there, Commander."

Tali felt an uncomfortable air chill the room when Shepard didn't respond. He wasn't like the other humans Tali had met. That she was sure of.

 _Well you can't really say that, can you?_ Tali told herself. _You don't even know him really. Just stories and rumors, and that military-style mask he wears over himself._

Suddenly, a loud screech echoed throughout the elevator and the force of inertia caused Tali to almost lose her balance before something caught her. Tali looked up and saw the commander grasping her arm, helping her regain her balance.

"The SSV Normandy can take down entire fleets, but can't keep a working elevator for more than a month. Pathetic." Tali heard Shepard say.

 _Was that humor?_

"Hold on." Tali walked up to the elevator control panel and bent over. "I know my way around ships." She opened the panel and began to meddle with the wiring. "If I just move this it should-"

A spark flashed before her and transferred a shock through her fingers.

"OW!" She clenched her index finger with her other hand as she fell back.

"Is your suit damaged?"

Tali looked up at Shepard, who stood even taller over her than he did before now that she was on the ground.

"No... I should be fine." Tali sighed as she stood herself up.

 _Way to make a first impression, Bosh-tet._ She scolded her own failure. _You're supposed to be an engineer!_

"The Normandy is not like other human ships, much less quarian ships." Shepard explained to her.

"I can see that now." Tali chuckled, but silenced herself when she realized Shepard hadn't joined her in laugher.

"So... how long are we going to be in here for?" Tali asked after a few moments of silent passed between them.

"Not long." Shepard put simply, and Tali felt that same awkward silence from before return.

Tali rubbed her right forearm as she held it close to her torso, an obvious show of her uneasiness. She looked up to right, having to gaze directly at the only person in the room with her. He was at least a foot taller than her, but her height was not what caught her eye. She observed him from a side angle. The way his platinum blond hair was just a little longer than the lieutenant's, and more... softer, Tali thought for some reason. But his eyes, they were hard. Unfeeling and callous.

She looked away from them quickly.

"Commander, I just remembered, I never thanked you for saving my life." Tali began, again hoping to break the awful silence again.

"It was apart of the mission." Shepard told her whilst not looking in her direction. "Thank Anderson for assigning it."

"But you were the one who saved me." Tali countered. "You risked yourself for me. It wasn't something that you had to do, you could have sent the Lieutenant or someone else in, but you were the one who did it in the end. So thank you for-"

"Save your thanks." Shepard interrupted, suddenly turning to face her. "I didn't do it to save you. I did it to complete the mission."

"You did both however." Tali shot back. "Maybe you weren't thinking of it as you did it, but it was still the right thing to do. You saved me, the data, and anyone else who Fist would have hurt in the future if you hadn't not stopped him." She took a short breath of air before going on. "You may not realize it, but you do good for many people everyday, Commander."

Shepard narrowed his eyes at the short quarian woman. "And so?" He asked coldly.

"So that's a good thing." Tali explained, gesturing with her hands as she did. "Doing good things is, well, good."

Shepard glowered at her for a moment long before shattering the silence.

"You give meaning to meaningless concepts, meaningless objects, and meaningless people." Shepard stated as it were fact, before then asking:

"Why?"

Before Tali could contemplate an answer for the commander, the elevator doors suddenly slid open.

"Commander!" Engineer Adams stood in the now-open path of the elevator doorway. "Oh, Tali! You're here too. Are you two both okay?"

"Fine." Shepard answered before he walked out of the elevator away from them both.

But even when he was gone, his words still echoed through the young quarian's ears.

 _You give meaning to meaningless concepts, meaningless objects, and meaningless people._

"Tali?"

 _Why?_

"Tali!"

She snapped out of her daze at the sound of her name.

"You okay?" Adams, the one who'd called her name, asked.

"I-I'm fine." She answered, immediately mentally slapping herself on the wrist for stuttering. "Can you show me the way to engineering again?"

Adams laughed heartily. "Of course." He spoke and led her off the fixed elevator.

 **\- Cargo Bay -**

"Is it true?"

Ashley looked up from her workbench, where the parts to her avenger rifle laid scattered. She turned her head to see Garrus, the former C-Sec turian, standing there.

"Is what true?" She asked for clarification of his question.

"Well, I was hoping it'd be this sort of dramatic thing where you know what I meant, but I guess not." Garrus walked up next to her, looking over her the weapon parts on the table. "But what I mean was the Skylian Blitz. I've heard the stories just like everyone else, but is any of it really true?"

Ashley decided right there and then that she did not like this nosy alien.

"What makes you think I know?" She replied, meeting his question with ridicule. "I was just as much there as you were."

"But you're part of the Alliance." Garrus argued.

"Pfft. As if that matters." Ashley scoffed. "When it comes to Commander Shepard, things like military commonality apparently don't exist."

"So by you being so bitter I suppose that means he never told you the full story?" Garrus asked again, ticking off the alliance marine even further.

"Yes." Ashley clarified broodingly. The more she thought about it, the more angry she became.

 _Calm down, Williams. Just because you'll be working with him doesn't mean you're entitled to his life story._ One side of her argued.

 _Well it's a good thing I'm not asking for his life story; just one event!_ Another side of her argued back.

"That's because you weren't there."

Ashley turned her head to the deep, grizzly voice that spoke out.

"That's the problem with storytelling. If you weren't there to see it with your own two eyes, then you might as well not try to learn what happened at all." Wrex explained from where he was across the room, leaning against alliance supply cases. "Because all you'll get is lies and bias."

"And I suppose you were there, Wrex." Garrus quipped.

"Yep." Wrex admitted simply.

"Wait, you were there?!" Ashley quickly dropped the barrel of the gun she had meddled with. "At Elysium?"

"I didn't stutter." Wrex grunted as Garrus and Ashley both walked towards the krogan. "I was there at Elysium. I was there at the first drop on to the planet's surface. I was there at the head of the Great Krogan Army as they marched towards Illyria, the capital city of Elysium. I was there when the twin battlemasters leading the army fell by Shepard's hand."

"What was a krogan army doing helping slavers?" Garrus asked.

"If you ever paid any attention to history you'd know that we krogan are all about glory. Even more so, about restoring once was once lost: our honor. Our glory."

"Maybe if you weren't the most warmongering species in the entire galaxy you wouldn't have lost either of those things." Garrus quipped.

Wrex shot him a distasteful glare at the turian before going on. "You see, Elysium was exactly what that was supposed to be. A chance to show the galaxy that the krogan could organize and work not just as lone wolves doing merc-level dirty work, but as an entire army." He snorted bristly. "And look how well it turned out."

"They were defeated?" Ashley questioned. Her heart had begun to race faster and faster as Wrex told them what the real story of Elysium was, not the black inked alliance report.

You can't hide everything, Commander.

"No. We weren't defeated." Wrex answered, embittered with his own memories of that day. "We didn't even get to fight the humans."

"That is not factually correct."

Ashley suddenly heard the sounds of footsteps behind her erring closer. Followed by a voice she recognized.

"I fought and killed two krogan." Commander Shepard corrected aloof. He stopped, standing but feet away from the three of them. "Now however is not the time for stories." He folded his arms over one another. "We have a mission, and I am here to brief you all."

Shepard explained then that the second voice that spoke in the recording that Tali gave them was a powerful asari matriarch named Benezia. That, and her daughter, Liara T'soni, was their objective in this new mission.

"So kidnapping?" Wrex asked, attempting to crack the solid block of ice that was Eric Shepard's sense of humor.

"No." The unaffected commander went on. "We are to seek out this asari and find out who's side she is on. Therum in the Knossos system of the Artemis Tau Cluster; that is where she was last seen, and so that is where we are to go."

"How long until we get there, Sir?" asked Ashley. She had never been on any mission this far in Alliance Space. But she supposed that new experiences would be common now that she was apart of the crew of the first human specter.

"We'll be dropping to the planet's surface in ten."

 _Ten?!_ Ashley had barely begun to modify her weapon, much less prepare herself for a mission!

Shepard's eyes peered over to exactly that, the dismantled assault rifle that sat awkwardly on her workbench.

 _Crap..._ Ashley swore to herself as Shepard walked over to the workbench.

"So check your gear," he clamped his hand down on the avenger's barrel and rail grip, forcibly pushing the two back into place, "strap your armour," he turned around with the weapon in his right hand, "and get set for combat." He pushed the rifle into Ashley chest before turning to leave.

 **\- Two minutes before drop -**

"What do you mean I can't go?!"

Shepard rolled his eyes under his N7 breather helm.

"I am perfectly capable of handling myself!"

"And what exactly is your combat experience, Ms. Zora?" He calmly turned around to the only member of his squad who was not sat in the Mako.

"Why else would you bring me on your crew if not to help you with your mission?" Tali asked calmly once she realized that yelling would gain her no ground.

"You help by bringing your engineering knowledge to the ship."

"I can do more..." Tali pleaded.

Shepard looked down at the quarian woman and analyzed his options as far as letting her into combat. This was not something he was use to. He was use to taking orders, having his squad assigned to him, and not being of his choosing.

This was indeed something new for the Hero of the Blitz.

"I... suppose." He finally gave in. "Alright, Ms. Zora, you are permitted to join. However, if I see one slip, you won't be getting any other chances. Is that clear?"

"Thank you, Commander." Tali bowed her head slightly, a sign of gratitude in Quarian society. "You won't regret this." She finished before walking past him towards the Mako.

Once Tali was out of range of hearing him, Shepard sighed. He had not been in charge for but a week on the Normandy, yet both his mind and body felt strangled by the duties of command.

Eric Shepard was not a people person. That was clear.

He looked down at his left wrist. A small, four by four blue holographic screen popped up, followed by white text.

 ** _Mission objective: Secure Liara T'soni._**

He looked up from his wrist, and the screen disappeared. He remembered once more:

 _Eric Shepard was a soldier._

* * *

 **Next chapter: A search and rescue mission turns into a dark re-encounter of Eric's past.**


	8. The Emergence of Power

**So, it's been awhile. In short: I am lazy, but not the laziest, as I still finished this... almost a year after the last update. I think I'll be able to write more now, (I THINK). However, if this isn't as good as the chapters before this, pls forgive. A year without writing any FF can do that to people. This chapter could also have a different feel than the others, as it has been awhile since I wrote Eric and I've come up with more additions to the extra plotlines I'll be adding to the Mass Effect universe. So sorry about that if it does. Anyhow, it feels good to finally continue this. Hope you all like!**

* * *

 _"Necessity is the mother of invention." - Plato_

 **The Emergence of Power**

Rusted metal creaked eerily below their feet, croaking like a toad. The sound of water droplets falling and splashing against rock echoed throughout the dig site.

"Elevator up ahead." Shepard spotted as he stepped over the body of a fallen geth shock trooper. "Wrex, take point. Tali, follow him and see if that elevator works."

The two aliens made their way ahead of the two humans. Shepard's eyes flickered under his helmet, looking over at the disgruntled Gunnery Chief who stood looking over the edge of the railing down at the next level under.

Shepard kept away from emotions, or at least tried not to, but that did not mean he did not understand their importance on the battlefield. He understood that the troubled soldier was as unreliable as the captured enemy. And he could very easily tell by her body language that Ashley Williams was indeed troubled.

"Williams."

Ashley snapped out her haze upon hearing her name.

"Sir?" She stood herself straight for the Commander.

"Everything alright?"

Out of all the things he could have said, those two words were the last things she had expected to leave the mouth of supposedly heartless Commander Shepard.

 _Maybe he does care…_

After a moment of stunned silence, Ashley gathered herself enough to speak.

"I-I'm fine, sir." She stuttered clumsily. "It's nothing really, just... never been a mission like this before. It's not just some patrol in the Verge, or babysitting some colony, this is the fate of the entire galaxy at stake. I just-"

"And that's why I need you." Shepard broke in.

"Sir?"

Shepard's eyes seemed to pierce hers, even through the tinted glass of his helmet. "Anderson wasn't the only one who read your file, so you don't need to prove anything to me. I know you aren't your grandfather."

Ashley couldn't stop the small gasp of surprise that escaped her mouth.

"But I also know that not everyone sees it like that." Shepard went on. "I know that when people see you, they don't see you as a Gunnery Sargent who earned her rank by blood, sweat and tears. They see a Williams. They see the granddaughter of the man who surrendered an entire human garrison to the turians in the First Contact War. This mission isn't just about saving the galaxy, not for you at least. No, this is about clearing your family's name."

"I would never let my personal feelings get in the way of our mission!" Ashley blurted out, only adding the "sir" seconds after. She'd never been afraid to speak her mind or share her feelings, even to her former alliance superiors, but Shepard was nothing - nothing - like her other superiors.

The noises of the cavern around them faded into a pale obscurity as Shepard suddenly placed his hand on Ahsley's shoulder.

"You're right. This is not going to get in the way of the mission, because this is going to push you. You have more than saving the galaxy to motivate you, and that's why I trust you. That is also why I know damn well that you will follow me, to cast off the shame of your family's past, for yourself, for the generations before you, and the generations of Williams that are still to come."

The sound of silence hugged the air tightly as Ashley took in the commander's words. Was this the same Shepard that she had come to know as so distant and aloof?

"Is that clear, Gunnery Sargent?"

 _There he is._

"Sir, yes sir." She said with a quick salute and an exultant smile she was unable to keep from coming into existence under her helmet. She could swear that under that black helm of his, Shepard was smiling back.

"Commander!"

"Wrex?" Shepard turned to the deep, scratchy voice that came from the elevator.

"The quarian got her arm stuck." Tali did not take kind to that description.

"I was trying to reach in so I could-"

"Yeah yeah yeah, whatever you say." Wrex cut her off.

"Can't you just help her out by yourself?" Ashley called back.

"Me? Ha! I'd rip her in half."

"Go and help Ms. Zora, Gunnery Sargent."

"Yes sir!" Ashley turned to walk towards the pair of aliens before stopping to look back at Shepard again. "Oh, by the way… Ash will do fine, sir."

Shepard pretended not to hear her as she turned and walked away with an invisible spring in her step.

 _Pah, Women._

He shook his head gently to relieve himself of the strange vibration he felt within him when he thought too hard about things… like that.

 _Like what?_

He didn't even know how to describe it. He assumed that they had been brought into existence when he overheard Ashley, Wrex, and Garrus chatting. Normally, he would not care for such trivial things as crew chatter, but, when he heard his name uttered, a twang of interest struck him. He stopped, and listened.

They were… interested, in him.

They did not fear him as did most of Normandy's crew with his reputation for brutality, and did not shy away from even mentioning his name less he overhear their gossip. Yet they were also not like the naïve civilians who begged for his autograph and were simply madly in love with the idea of a Commander Shepard. He had taken Ashley for one of those types at first, but he was pleased when she showed otherwise.

No, they were not gutless runts who trembled at the very thought of the ruthless commander, and neither were they blubbering fangirls. They were simply interested in who he was, and that made he stir.

 _Maybe it isn't that… it could be been that Quarian girl - when she and I were trapped in the elevator._

 _"You may not realize it, but you do good for many people everyday, Commander."_

The sound of his fists tightening, squeezing against the material of his gloves, could only be heard well within the quiet digsite. But felt only by him was the whitening of his knuckles, and the conflict that had been brewing - no - storming, within his mind.

They reminded him of _them_. Ashley, Tali, Garrus, Wrex, their alikeness to _them_ was uncanny, unsettling, even disturbing. _Their_ words, _their_ behavior, _their_ personalities, _their_ personal ideals and beliefs.

 _Yes, disturbing._ Shepard mused as he gazed up at the rocky ceiling of the digsite. _That is a good word to describe this. Perhaps it is simply these ruins. The protheans supposedly loved messing with people's heads._

"Growing soft, are we?"

Shepard's focus on his internal issues snapped like oak stuck by lightning. He knew that voice.

"Dean?" Shepard turned around with caution to look at the man to whom that voice belonged to. His armour was just as Shepard remembered it, black Aegis type with swamp green details. His N7 helmet matched the colors on his armor, just as Shepard's N7 helmet did with his armor.

"The one and only. Well, besides the other thousands of people with the name Dean. Although I would guess my last name makes me a bit-"

Staring down the barrel of Shepard's sidearm causing him to shut his mouth.

"Just what the hell do you think you're doing here?" Shepard clenched his jaw, his emotions grinding together with his teeth. "You are supposed to be dead. No, you _are_ dead."

Dean looked at Shepard sideways before raising his arm and moving it back and forth. "Seems alive to me."

Shepard glared, unwilling to believe what he saw before him. There were so many questions that spun themselves into existence in his mind. How did he survive? Where had he been? Why was he here now? How did he find him? But Shepard remembered what must be done, and placed his own interests to the side.

 _The mission must be completed._

"Corporal, you need to come with me."

"Hmm?" Dean hummed, as if Shepard's order was merely a request, holding as much weight as a feather.

"I don't know why you're here, but whatever reason or mission you have, it is nothing compared to mine." Shepard explained, his gun still pointed at Dean's visor.

"You always were high and mighty when it came to missions," Dean sighed before continuing, "but I'm not here on any mission. At least none given to me by the Alliance."

"What the hell are you doing here then?" Shepard asked.

"It's more of a personal mission…" Stroking the chin of his helmet, Dean looked away from Shepard and up at the ceiling, before shifting his gaze back down at him. "I'm getting the gang back to together."

Shepard was not amused. "Explain. Now."

"Oh, come on, you know what I'm talking about!"

Shepard's grip on his Carnifex grew stronger.

"I'm going to reunite Squad 7!"

He pulled the trigger without a second thought.

But the helmet over Dean's face did not explode with gore as he hoped it would. Instead, the body of his former teammate seemed to flicker in and out of existence, before finally disappearing completely.

A hologram… Shepard realized as he lowered his weapon. _That means there could be someone else playing these tricks on me, but… Dean's omni-tool ability was being able to create holograms at a whim. That cannot be a coincidence_. **(1)**

It was only after the adrenaline left his blood that Shepard understood that him not shooting an alive Dean that was something that in the long haul would save him a lot of ear-full from the alliance higher-ups, even if he was a specter.

"Shepard!"

He turned and saw the three he had brought from the Normandy looking at him from the elevator. They stared at him with eyes that would only be cast on a madman.

 _I might as well be. Ghosts are telltales for sane men._

"I thought I saw a geth." He placed his pistol back on his hip and ignored their questioning eyes. "Carry on."

The team of four then made their way deeper into the ruins, each of them having their own thoughts on the mission and its contents so far.

 _The ride over here with the Mako may of gone smoothly, but this place… something's off._ Ashley thought. _I know saying it's too quiet is such a cliché, but…_

Meanwhile, Tali's thoughts were less focused on the mission and more on a certain someone's actions. _What Shepard was thinking shooting off his gun into nothing? There certainly weren't any geth there, my scanners would have picked them up for sure if there were… Keelah, that man is confusing._

 _Hmmm, maybe he's part krogan._ Wrex contemplated, looking at the back of Shepard's head from behind him in the elevator _. That would explain how aggressive he is. I remember in my younger days when I used to fire off my weapon at random for no reason whatsoever… good times, good times._

The elevator came to a screeching but gentle halt. Shepard was the first to exit, his squad mates following close behind him when he heard an unfamiliar voice echo through the dig site.

"Hello, is anyone there?"

 _Female. Young. Either asari or human, most likely the former._ Shepard thought as he morphed the voice into a person in his mind.

"Keep your guard up." He whispered just loud enough for his team to hear. "Do not assume hostilities unless the target is geth."

"Please, if anyone can hear me, I need help!" The feminine voice called out again.

"Commander, do you think that's who we're here for?" Ashley asked from Shepard's side.

"Yes." He answered back. "However, we still don't know whether she is working with Saren or not. Stay sharp, Gunnery Sargent."

"Yes sir."

They rounded a corner to find a blue wall of energy held by a particularly well preserved part of the ruins, and behind it, suspended in the air seemingly by nothing, was the objective of the mission: Liara T'soni.

(break)

At first, she was happy to see another sentient lifeform after so long. But almost immediately her mind became clouded with doubts. Who were these people? How did they find her? Were they even looking for her or did they merely stumble across her misfortune randomly?

"Liara T'soni?"

The one in the front, the human male, spoke up. He knew her name.

"Y-Yes." She fumbled with her words. "I am Liara T'soni. Who are-"

"Are you working for Saren Arterius?" He asked, interrupting her question.

"No?" Said Liara, confused. "I am an archeologist. I came he to study the ruins, but then the geth began to attack and I hid but then this energy field shot up and-"

"Sir, I think she's unstable." Another one of the four put in. Liara could tell she was human too, but unlike the male, who held a tone of strict neutrality, there untrusting hostility in the words she spoke. "No telling how long she's been down here, maybe long enough to go insane; and that's assuming she is telling us the truth about her relationship to Saren."

However, before she could go on any further, the human male held up his hand in an open palm. Whatever that meant, it got the human female to stop talking. The man in black armour took a few steps forward, enough to close the distance between Liara and him so that she could observe him more closely. It was only then that she recognized the type of armour he wore. He was an alliance soldier.

 _Thank the Goddess!_ Relief spread through her tired body, a soft sigh leaving her mouth. Soon however, an uncomfortable feeling returned to her, but it was different than before. Instead of a bleeding uncertainly of the identity of new people, she felt the chilling gaze of the man who spoke her name land upon her.

Once he looked at her, he didn't seem to move a muscle for a few brief moments. To stand completely and utterly still was a feat Liara thought entirely impossible until she met this man. Within those moments in time, a cold sweat broke out over Liara's entire body. Her entire life she studied dig sites and ruins with a passion, but now, she was the one being studied, observed, and judged. She could not meet his gaze.

Then, he turned around, and began to walk away.

"Sir?" The human female, who Liara now noticed as well was an alliance soldier.

"We're getting her out of there." He stopped, turning to look at his fellow soldier. Before she could object, he spoke again. "She's not working for Saren."

"And you know that how, Shepard?" A krogan who was with them asked, in a far less respectful way then the female alliance soldier would, who Liara guessed was thinking the same thing.

"Have you ever been lied to before, Wrex?" Shepard tilted his head to the towering Krogan. Tension filled the air like mist.

"Yeah, I have." Wrex's response was simple and without further detail, there was no desire in the krogan to go into the topic any more so.

Shepard did not stop questioning him. "Where were you looking when they lied?"

"Don't remember." Grunted Wrex.

"Well… next time you know someone is lying to you, look them in the eyes." Shepard turned away, looking back towards Liara. "It'll serve as a great reference point when you have to decide who whether or not you can trust someone."

Liara felt the need to gasp as she felt him looking at her again. Did this mean he trusted her? He did want to find a way to free her, but did that mean…

"Do you know of anyway we can get you down from there?" Shepard asked her.

"I…" It took Liara to few moments to process an answer for a number of reasons. "I am not sure, but there is a mining laser we used for excavation just a bit of a ways behind you, if you manage to activate it you could-"

"Got it." Shepard cut her off and again turned away, walking towards where the laser was.

"Sir!" the alliance woman called out to him. "Before we get her down," Liara picked up from that alone that this women trusted Shepard's judgement, even if she disagreed with him, "shouldn't we tell her about-"

"We'll inform Ms. T'soni once we escort her to the Normandy." Liara also picked up that this Shepard person had a really bad habit of interrupting others, but more than that, she was concerned about whatever this was she needed to be informed of. Did it have something to do with why the geth came after her? Liara sighed as she watched them walk away towards where she had directed them. She supposed she wouldn't be getting an answer anytime soon.

Minutes later, after hearing barrages of gunfire exchanged throughout the digsite, Liara felt the ground, along with pretty much everything else around her, shake as the mining laser fired. It wasn't long before her rescuers appeared again, this time behind her.

"Oh!" She exclaimed as Wrex, Shepard, and the quarian girl walked up beside her. "Thank the Goddess you're here. Now, the controls to get me down should be right there, but I've never been able to access them-" She fell to the floor unceremoniously before she could finish her sentence.

"Nice, Shepard." Wrex chuckled.

A gloved hand entered the grounded Liara's field of view. She grasped it with her own, and it pulled her up. The hand was Shepard's.

"You… were able to use the controls?" She asked him.

Shepard nodded.

"How?!" Liara exclaimed, momentarily forgetting her current situation as the archeologist side of her completely took over. "I have studied prothean artifacts and ruins for years, but I've never been able to work them so easily! I takes years of study and practice to properly - wait, do you have any prior experience with prothean technology?"

"Yes, but not in the way you would think." Shepard's answer confused her, but she decided that she could question him more thoroughly at a later time. That, she would definitely be doing.

"Well, regardless, you did save me, so… thank you, uh…" She drawled, not knowing how to address the man.

"I'm Commander Shepard." Shepard gestured to himself, and then to the others. "Wrex,Tali'Zorah nar Rayya. We are here to recuse you." Before she could ask, he answered. "I know you have questions, but they will have to wait until we are in a safer place."

Liara nodded her head in agreement as a loud rumble accompanied by the ground they stood on almost caused her to lose her balance.

"I can see your point." Said Liara as the shaking stopped and she regained her footing. She stepped over to the control panel of the elevator behind them. "This will take us out of the dig site." She told them as they gathered on the pale platform.

Prothean architecture was organized, solid and efficient. There were no abstractions, only clear reasons and purposes as to why each block was placed and each wire connected. Yet the hardness of the design at the same time held a mystical feeling to it. Some would call it futuristic, even for the advanced state of civilization which the galaxy was in currently.

"Joker, lock in on my location and be ready for pickup. I sent Ashely back to get the Mako and destroy the exit behind her." Shepard said into his comm unit as the elevator took them up, speaking to whom Liara could only assume to be the man piloting the means to their escape.

"Aye, aye, Commander. Secure and aweigh. ETA eight minutes."

The elevator came to a halt.

"Surrender. Or don't. That would be more fun."

A krogan with white battlearmour, flanked on either side by two geth shock troopers and one geth sniper, said with an amused chuckle.

"Move. Now." Shepard shot back, his voice carrying with it a tone that showed he had no desire to talk.

"Ha!" The krogan laughed heartily. "My lucky day. You've got some real fire in your eyes there, boy." He then lowered his head villainously. "I can't wait to see doused. Open fire!"

Tali and Liara took cover behind the control panel they'd used to activate the elevator. Wrex began to move to the side behind on of the elevator's pillars. Both sides exchanged a sea of gunfire, but only the geth were hit. One geth sniper caught a shot to its eye, instantly rendering it dead, while a geth shook trooper had its right arm blown off, making it unable to participate in the battle. It self destructed within seconds.

Wrex took aim and fired a carnage shot into the chest of another shook trooper, causing it to be blasted back into the only remaining geth sniper in the battle. Wrex ran forward and jumped on both of their flashlight heads before they could stand back up, crashing them under his massive weight. But before he could get to dismantling the two other geth left, the other krogan in the room knocked him out with the butt of his shotgun.

Meanwhile, Liara and Tali took care of the remaining geth. Tali drained the one to the right of its shields with her omni tool before firing one shot into its eyehole. Liara lifted the one to the left with her biotic powers before throwing it against a wall behind it, bending its body in a way its creators certainly had not intended.

"Well would you look at that!" Liara recognized the gruff voice of the krogan leader of the geth sent to kill them. "Looks like I have you two lovely ladies all to myself." He appeared from behind a pillar and began walking towards her and Tali. Liara summoned her biotics and tried to throw him as she did the geth, but a biotic barrier of his own protected him. She looked next to her to Tali, only to see her omni-tool still in cool-down.

"Too bad the boss wants you alive and well, blue. I would have had so much fun with you." He chuckled darkly before shifting his red-eyed gaze to Tali. "You on the other hand… well, I've always wanted to see what was under a quarian's suit. Guess this really is my lucky day."

Tali drew her sidearm, but before she could start firing, Shepard seemed to appear out of nothing and launched a kick into the side of the krogan's head. Shepard landed perfectly on his feet as the krogan stumbled several feet before catching himself on another pillar.

 **(Begin playing: Two Steps From Hell - Skyworld)**

"You two," Shepard turned his head to Liara and Tali, "stay behind me." He said, and they both quickly followed the order, running behind him.

"Damn… that actually hurt, human." The krogan groaned, rubbing his head and standing up straight again. "Didn't know your kind could hit that hard."

"I can hit harder than that." Shepard claimed, and then, to both Liara and Tali's surprise, and distress, holstered his weapons. "Allow me to show you." He challenged.

The krogan stared at him for a moment with a stunned look similar to that on the faces of Liara and Tali, but unlike them, his mouth then split into a ferocious grin.

"I like you, human." He threw his shotgun to floor. "You're not like the rest."

Shepard's blue eyes glared at him. "So I've been told." He raised his fists, and took one step back. Tali and Liara did as he said and stayed behind him, taking a step back as well.

"Hm, I can tell you must have trouble socializing with the rest of your kind, being that way." The krogan returned, and took one step forward.

"I never saw any need to." Said Shepard, taking another step back.

"So, you're an outcast as well?" Asked the krogan, taking a step forward again.

"You could say that." Shepard grunted and took a step back once more.

"Strong as well as a outcast among his own." The krogan chuckled. "Are sure you aren't half krogan, boy?" He took another step forward, and was now standing in the center of the elevator.

"That would be a possibility, if it weren't for one particular thing me." Shepard raised his right hand pressed down on a mechanism on his forearm. Suddenly, what had to be yards of wires strung up around the room were now visible to the naked eye, appearing out of nothing just as Shepard did before.

"I'm too deceptive."

Before the krogan could react, the wires flew zipped around the room, tightening around him, holding his arms to his sides and his legs so closely he could hardly stand. "W-What?" He managed to get out. "How?"

"Those wires aren't the only thing that can become invisible." Shepard said, pointing at himself with his thumb while still pressing down on his omni-tool. "While you were fighting and distracted, I set my trap. I don't have the time to fight you like I would normally, as this place is going to collapse any minute now, so I decided to get it over with as soon as I could."

"Hmph!" The krogan grunted, stretching out his arms and legs, beginning to stretch the wire with his pure strength. "Don't think Saren picked me for this because I was weak!"

Tali reached for her sidearm to begin firing into the krogan while he was still suspended, but Shepard stopped her before she could even touch it.

"If you shoot him, you'll also shoot my wiring around him, setting him free only to put a few dents in his shields."

"At this point it's only a matter of time until he breaks free, we have to do something!" Tali shot back. "We can't just leave him here!"

"You are right…" Shepard murmured to himself. "Not here."

"Do you have any ideas, Commander?" Liara asked.

"I have a theory, well, more of a hypothesis." Shepard said, and closed his eyes, focusing solely on his thoughts. He thought back to the prothean vision. The images of war, chaos, destruction, death and extinction, flooded his mind once more, but as they filled his head, something else began to form. Flashes of code, unintelligible to the naked eye, began to blink in and out between the traumatizing images. Out of the barrage of strange numbers and letters, a message revealed itself from the beacon's maddening rambling.

 _ **"Control that which by destiny is yours, Inheritor."**_

A bright floating green aura that was entwined with the same code from his vision engulfed his right hand. Shepard recognized it as the same type of green aura that was imbued within the prothean on Eden Prime as well.

Before goggling over his hand any longer, the sound of his wires snapping one by one off the Krogan drew away his attention from it. But just then, as he focused on the issue of the battlemaster being free once more, the green aura began to spread from his hand through the air, until it reached the elevator controls. Suddenly, the prothean controls which before only he had access to, flared to life in the same shade of green that the aura was. Without anyone laying a finger upon the controls, the elevator then dropped down, leaving the Krogan dangling over an abyss which he had no way of escaping.

Before the rest of the wires could snap on their own, Shepard drew his pistol and fired at the parts of the wire which were attached to the pillars, leaving the Krogan to suffer a wailing fall where even if he survived, he would be trapped in a collapsing ruin.

The green aura dematerialized around him, and the controls. Shepard clenched his fist and moved his wrist, checking to see if the strange aura had at all immobilized him.

 **(Stop playing: Two Steps From Hell - Skyworld)**

 _Everything checks out._ He thought, and turned around to face the two women that had stayed behind him the entire time. **(2)**

Tali stood, her masked face looking at him with emotion hidden behind said mask, but the shock she felt could be seen regardless.

Liara's reaction, on the other hand, could be seen as clear as daylight, which Shepard imagined she had been deprived of for quite some time. From her extremely dilated pupils alone, Shepard could not only see, but feel the almost limitless interest the scientist took in him, and the enthrallment she felt towards him after witnessing what he'd done.

Shepard learned at that moment that far more than dishonesty could be told from the gaze of another's eyes.

But, there were more pressing matters a the moment.

"Well done you two." He nodded to them both before walking over to and crouching down next to an unconscious Wrex.

"Ugh… what happened?" Wrex groaned as the medi-gel Shepard gave him took its affect on him.

"We'll go over it later." He opened his eyes to see Shepard standing over him, offering a him a hand. Wrex helped himself up. Shepard ignored him, and turned back to Liara and Tali. With the wave of his hand, he signaled for them to follow him out of the collapsing digsite. The two went with him without a word.

* * *

 **1\. This is what I was talking about when I said in the beginning that I planned more plotlines.**

 **2\. The reason why I felt like it was necessary to give Shep some extra powers is that I feel like in the base game, the only thing (storywise) unique about your character is that he has a special version of alien PTSD that helps him in the plot. I wanted to make Shep more valuable than his specter status and visions.**


End file.
